WOMEN’S ELECTRIFICATION1
Michel Matly
Director
MARGE,
Rue Fortunière, 46240 Labastide Murat,
France
Email: [email protected]
1
This report is an output of the Collaborative Research Group on Gender and Energy (CRGGE) with support from the
ENERGIA International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy and the United Kingdom Department for
International Development (DFID) KaR research project R8346 on “Gender as a Key Variable in Energy
Interventions.” For more information and other publications of the CRGGE and the DFID project, see
www.energia.org/crgge”.
1
‘When the man does not know where he is going, he better go back on his tracks’
Bocar Sada Sy (2004), from a wolof proverb
‘Before, when you were wooing, you spoke of love, To prove your passion, you offered your heart,
Today it is not the same, it’s changed, it’s changed, To seduce your dear angel, you whisper in her
ear, Ah, darling, come and kiss me, and I will give you... A frigidaire, a shiny scooter, An atomizer,
and a Dunlopillo, A cooker, with a glass oven, A pile of covers, and cake pans,, An egg beater, to
make vinaigrette, A beautiful extractor, to eat up odors, Warming sheets, a waffle iron, An airplane
for two, and we’ll be happy.’
Boris Vian (1958) The complaint of progress
‘Change, change to ultramodern kitchen line, washing machines, refrigerators, driers, air
conditioning systems, televisions, mixers, wax polishers, vacuum cleaners, radio cassettes, video
recorders...
Well, and when consumption society reaches consumption satiety, what?’
Quino (ed. 1998) Mafalda 10.
2
Table of Contents
Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................3
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................4
Executive Summary .............................................................................................................................5
1 A male history: electrification in Europe.....................................................................................8
1.1
The development of the electricity sector ............................................................................8
1.2
Public intervention .............................................................................................................10
1.3
An all-male leadership .......................................................................................................13
1.4
Rural electrification: the examples of France and Ireland .................................................13
1.4.1
France.........................................................................................................................13
1.4.2
Ireland ........................................................................................................................17
2 The need for women: electrification in the USA .......................................................................19
2.1
The development of the electricity sector ..........................................................................19
2.2
Public intervention .............................................................................................................21
2.3
Rural electrification............................................................................................................23
2.4
Relying on women .............................................................................................................27
3 Naked electrification, clothed electrification: the development of the domestic appliance
market in Europe and the USA ..........................................................................................................28
3.1
The development of the domestic appliance market in Europe .........................................28
3.1.1
Overall market............................................................................................................28
3.1.2
Rural market...............................................................................................................31
3.2
The development of the domestic appliance market in the USA.......................................33
3.2.1
Overall market............................................................................................................33
3.2.2
Rural market...............................................................................................................36
4 The holy alliance between women and industry........................................................................40
4.1
Domestic science: rationalising and modernising housework ...........................................40
4.2
Women needed industry to popularise home economics ideology....................................42
4.3
Industry needed women to sell its products .......................................................................44
5 The three conditions for successful electrification ....................................................................49
5.1
Trust people........................................................................................................................49
5.1.1
Electrification Planning is an historical nonsense......................................................49
5.1.2
Support local initiatives .............................................................................................50
5.2
Target the poor, but make them pay ..................................................................................52
5.3
Respond to women’s needs................................................................................................54
5.3.1
An economic electrification .......................................................................................54
5.3.2
Not a world of difference ...........................................................................................56
5.3.3
Promoting consumption .............................................................................................57
6 Women’s electrification.............................................................................................................61
6.1
Impact of electrification on women’s empowerment ........................................................61
6.2
Home technology and development...................................................................................65
6.3
Women’s electrification.....................................................................................................68
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................................71
3
Abstract
This study draws lessons from experience with rural electrification in Europe and the US, on the
ideology of women’s electrification and how this may apply in developing countries today. Rural
electrification came 30 years later in the US than in Europe, but quickly reached urban levels. In
Europe, rural electrification was used mainly for lighting, radio and some farm equipment. In the
US, federal funding was used not only to develop grids but to provide access to electric productive
equipment and domestic appliances. The latter quickly became the bigger success. Rural electric
cooperatives were able to cut costs by 30-50% compared to the existing large private and public
utilities, and showed that the poor could pay. Women’s desire for home appliances drove the rural
market and high load, bolstered by home economics, a ready-made ideology for the electricity
industry. Electric appliances relieved women of hard burdens and allowed them to work more
efficiently in their homes, and go out to paid work. Developing countries should also consider this
model of “women’s electrification.”
Keywords: History, Europe, USA, Rural electrification, Electric services, Women empowerment
4
Executive Summary
When establishing a parallel overview of the development of the electricity sectors in Europe and in
the USA, some consideration needs to be given to the general economic situations in the two
regions. At the end of the 19th century, when electricity begins is history, the USA was globally
richer than Europe, and its GDP per capita about one-third higher than the European average.
Comparing the USA with the leading European industrial country of the time, Great Britain, brings
one to the conclusion that, in 1900, the US economy was significantly ahead: the US stock of
machinery and equipment per capita was about twice that in Britain, and the US use of energy per
capita about 25% higher (Angus Madison, Monitoring the world economy).
In the following decades - the first half 20th century, when most Western electrification occurs - US
economic growth rate overall was about double the European one: 1.7% annually in real terms on
average, against 0.9% in Europe (Angus Madison). The two World Wars created major heavy
traumas for European populations and economies, while they had effects ranging from slightly
negative to heavily positive for the US economy. As a result, the US GDP per capita reached more
than double the Western European average in the 1950s, a difference that would steadily diminish
thereafter with European economy recovery.
European and US histories of electrification are quite different, both in speed and in nature.
However, one should not be too quick to assume that relative wealth was the major determining
factor. It certainly had an impact on the development of a large American electricity sector,
expanding its influence worldwide, but clearly this cannot explain why European rural
electrification was at least two decades ahead of the US situation. Further, the differences in wealth
between the US and most advanced European countries was not so great that it can fully explain
why American households had access to many electric services at least two decades before
European ones.
It cannot either be argued - particularly when dealing in comparisons between the history of
industrialised countries and the actuality of third world - that farmers’ incomes were a major reason
for the development of grids into rural areas. Rural electrification was carried out in times of
impoverishment for US and European farmers. While economies were growing overall, agriculture
was losing its importance: between 1900 and 1960, its share of national income fell from 20% to
7.5% in the United States, and from 35% to 12% in France. This had strong consequences for
disposable rural family incomes: in the mid-1930s, after a period of relative wealth due to the First
World War, North American rural economies collapsed: about one-third of farms were heavily
mortgaged, and most of them were not profitable and expected to disappear. Meanwhile, in the
largely rural European countries such as France, where farmers had long resisted urban migration,
rural incomes in real terms in 1955 were about two-thirds of the 1914 level, and half the level of
1865-75 (Georges Duby, Histoire de la France Rurale).
Certainly, other factors played, and were still to play, more important roles than relative wealth in
the success of rural electrification. Analysts generally consider that the direct involvement of States
has been the major factor in the success, and that the private sector by itself was not eager to
quickly extend electrification to rural areas with little potential profit. This argument is supported
by the differential growth between highly State-supported European electrification, mostly achieved
by the 1930s, and the private-sector-led American power sector largely absent from rural areas at
that time, and by the following success of the American cooperative movement promoted by the
Federal government. It is certainly a strong argument, but I believe that it led and still leads to
5
erroneous conclusions, the main one being the preference for public rather than private
electrification.
The history of electrification shows a diversity of situations. In the USA, as well as in Europe,
private, public and NGO utilities have proliferated and still exist. This document has neither the
purpose nor desire to enter the debate between the pros and cons of these forms of property and
management. It nevertheless attempts to demonstrate that the role of State was truly fundamental in
speeding up the electrification process, primarily because governments used it as a lever to promote
local community initiatives. Certainly, major US private companies only entered the rural market
with reluctance, but American urban public companies had exactly the same attitude at that time.
Europe brought success stories of rural electrification by private small and medium enterprises - as
well as by local communities and NGOs - as well illustrated in a country now paradoxically best
known for its centralised public electricity sector: France.
This document attempts to show that the difference between European and US electrification is one
of concept. Certainly electrification has to deal with global economic politics, whose expression
was totally different in the two continents. European rural electrification reflected the dominant
politics of the time, shared by political leaders, mainstream capitalists as well as their radical
Marxist opponents, i.e. mistaken views on colonial expansion and national markets. It delivered a
widespread, but minimal - and rather uninteresting - service, two or three bulbs and at best a radio.
US politicians in the 1930s took Europe as an example to justify federal support for rural
electrification. However, believing that the American cooperative movement applied the European
model two decades later would be erroneous. Cooperatives instead used public funds to apply the
American urban private-sector model to rural areas. A model which considered the arrival of the
grid as a mere entry point to build up a market for electric services, for production if possible, and as it quickly proved to be very efficient - for domestic services. Public money was spent not only to
establish generators and lines, but also to spread refrigerators and washing machines - as a way to
increase sales and consolidate cooperative utilities. Rural electrification in America reflected
nothing more than the general political consensus of the existence of a large domestic market - in its
two senses of national and household markets - for commodities. Rural markets may appear to be
somehow more difficult, but cooperatives were tremendously successful in developing these with
adequate public support.
Together with this confidence in market possibilities, came another certitude, shared by American
capitalist and cooperative sectors, that women would have a crucial role to play: they were the
necessary agents to modernise homes, pave the way for the dissemination of electric services and
equipment, and through this make electrification more cost-effective and profitable. This has major
consequences. In contrast with the ‘all-male’ European electrification, the American electricity
sector successfully developed itself by heavily involving women, in large private utilities as well as
in grassroots cooperatives, at central and regional level, in executive management as well as in field
extension. American electrification was engendered not by any expression of feminist feeling, but
by simple financial realism: a simple argument that any electrician understands - women power is
the load factor.
Rural electrification had a very different meaning in America than in Europe. A meaning that has
been lost along the way, since the general views on third world markets are very similar to the
unfounded views that European politicians had of their own markets or, as the cooperatives proved,
the views of American private electric companies of their rural markets. This may be the correct
interpretation of electrification, and an alternative to present philosophy and trends: an
6
electrification where women have a large part to play, as both market prospects and developers:
women’s electrification.
7
1
A male history: electrification in Europe
1.1
The development of the electricity sector
Based on early experiments with a lamp by the British inventor Edward Staite in the middle of the
18th century, the first truly operative all-glass hermetically-sealed electric bulb was developed in
1879 in Britain by Joseph Swan. This paved the way for the development of electricity systems all
over the world in just a matter of a few years.
The first attempt at a complete system of generation, transport and distribution, albeit still
experimental, was also in Britain: the Holborn Viaduct plant in London, built by the Edison
company, opened in January 1882 and ceased operating in 1884, long enough to prove such a
system was feasible. Another plant entered operation the same year in Brighton.
Similar systems quickly spread into many countries in the 1880s, on a now operational scale. Italy
claims to have had the first European fully operational system in 1883 in Milan, also built by an
Edison company, which began its operations by illuminating the “Teatro alla Scala” for the premier
of Ponchielli’s Gioconda. Switzerland had its first public lighting in 1882 (Lausanne) and its first
distribution to clients in 1886 (near Lucern), while the first Spanish system was built in Barcelona
in 1883. On the other side of the globe, Brisbane, in Australia, in 1882 and Reefton, in New
Zealand, were, in 1887, the first cities in their countries to have electricity. The first long distance
transmission line was established in Germany in 1891 between Miesbach and Munich (177km).
Until the early years of the 20th century, the development of electricity in countries such as
Switzerland, the UK and Germany proceeded quicker than in France. In 1896, Switzerland had an
installed capacity of 58 MW, greater than France (with a population one-tenth of that of France). In
1898, both the UK and Germany had over 100 MW of installed capacity, while France had only 70
MW. French systems were also smaller: there were 531 generation plants in France, 375 in
Germany, and 135 in UK. Electrification was also more widespread than in France: Paris
represented 40% of demand, while Berlin and London no more than 22%.
The first markets were for street lighting, electric traction and industry. New utilities were
experimenting, on the technical as well as the commercial level: as soon as a new generation
scheme became operative, producers began to seek out clients, up to the point where any new client
would be more of an inconvenience than a source of benefits. There were several utilities and a still
modest consumption: by 1900, Paris had six utilities and 16 000 customers using as an average of
70 KWh/month (from 30 KWh/month with the “Champs Elysées” utility - to 150 KWh/month with
the “Air Comprimé” utility). Berlin had 5400 domestic and non-domestic customers using an
average of 275 KWh/month.
Germany was developing electrified streetcars at a rapid pace: there were 1400 km of routes in
1899, against 490 km in France, 210 km in UK, 150 in Italy (but already 24 500 km in USA).
Development of the electric sector was impressive in UK, nearly matching the US level in terms of
installed power per inhabitant, while Germany and France were already far behind.
8
KW per1000 inhabitants
USA
UK
Germany
France
1906-1907
35
28
11
7
Different reasons may be invoked to explain these differences in the early stages of power sector
development. In France these included a slow economic growth (1.8% per year between 1893 and
1913), higher price of coal, stronger resistance by gas companies (who had long-term contracts with
the large cities), and a sector dominated by medium-size enterprises with rather small systems (in
1906, 791 utilities were operating with 6126 employees - an average of under eight per utility - and
of these 626 had five or fewer employees). In England and Germany, the direct investment by local
authorities, plus higher prices for electricity, attracted many investors encouraging rapid
development.
Nevertheless, despite still sluggish French industrial growth (2.8% on average between 1896 and
1913), electricity appears quickly as a fairly dynamic sector and shares with water a 8.9% growth
over this period. Systems grow: although the average generation plant is still under 1 MW (700 kW
in 1910), some “big” units have been built (35 of more than 1.5 MW, of which four are larger than
7 MW and eleven between 3 MW and 7 MW). Utilities are now present in most of the 90 French
départements, even if electrification is still limited to main centres. The availability of energy
resources is the key factor: Northern France is more electrified due to coal resources; and in
southern regions electrification develops mostly around the Alps, sustained by their large
hydroelectric potential.
In 1913, Paris has more than 1000 installers/electricians who serve 130 000 clients through a now
unified distribution system. France now has over 5000 grids, and utilities serve about 800 000
clients. Five years later, there are nearly two million subscribers in France. The electricity sector
grows faster during the 1905-1925 period than in other, and even faster than in the USA. The first
quarter of the 20th century sees European countries ending up with somewhat comparable
electrification results, but trailing behind the USA which was significantly ahead in terms of power
sector development as can be seen in the table below.
KW per 1000 inhabitants
USA
UK
Germany
France
1926-1927
223
93
73
82
in relation to 1906-7
546%
236%
560%
1139%
Source: Histoire de l’électrification française, Volume I
The apparently quicker development in France in this period can be explained by three factors. The
first factor is the early normalisation of systems, which allowed the sector to quickly concentrate its
development. As a consequence, and the second factor, there was the massive involvement of large
companies and an increasing interest by private banks and financial institutions, in other words the
entrance of “grand capital” into the power business. By 1919, nineteen utilities already featured in
the leading 150 listed firms, and the number would continue to increase up to nationalisation. 19191923 saw the construction of the first large plants near Paris and in Northern France.
9
The third factor was the strong development of hydroelectric systems, the interest in which was
greatly enhanced during World War I. In 1920, France was already using 17% of its hydroelectric
potential, behind Switzerland (30%) but ahead of countries such as Canada (15%), the Nordic
countries (Norway 14%, Sweden 12%) and the USA (8%). Between 1914 and 1922, French
hydropower capacity increased by 50% and between 1914 and 1926 it doubled.
While a strongly capitalistic sector was developing at a fast pace, small systems were to an extent
conquering rural areas. In 1920, 20% of French municipalities had access to electricity, and by 1926
there were 1500 concessionaires covering 14 000 concessions, about 35% of all French
municipalities. Quite a large number of the existing utilities were still very small: of the 1095
licensed utilities (with a total of 25 670 employees, or an average of about 23), more than two-thirds
(701) had five or fewer employees.
By the 1930s, some of the smaller European countries, such as Switzerland and the Netherlands,
had largely completed their electrification programmes. In larger countries, such as France, there
was a lot still to do, but electrification was progressing at a rapid pace. 1927 saw particularly good
investment conditions (monetary stability, lower long-term interest rates down from 14%-15% to
7%), and a large investment programme was established which realised, around 1934-36, eleven
new “super-centrals” (six in Paris and five in other regions delivering 20% of all electricity needs.
The 1930s and 1940s saw interconnections (regional, then national in 1938) and the establishment
of a distribution network which at the time was among the densest in the world (600 000 km of grid
in 1946), while rural electrification received public financial support.
The 1930s economic crisis and the situation of excess equipment, due to the strong competition
between thermal and hydro, led to new priorities. Domestic demand, which had been largely
neglected by the utilities, slowly developed from 7% in 1927 to 13.5% in 1937. Search for new
domestic customers increased, in large cities (30% of households connected in Paris by the mid
1930s), as well as in rural areas. Local hydroelectric resources were exploited: of the 70 000
watermills recorded in 1890, 4286 were already equipped by 1933 with electricity generators, most
of them smaller than 200 KW. Public policy also encouraged interconnection development and the
completion of rural electrification. In 1933, only 6300 municipalities (15% of the total) were still to
be electrified and, by January 1937, 96% of French municipalities were connected to an electrical
grid, and 90% of the population has access to electricity.
From less than two million in 1918, there were 10.7 million subscribers in 1936, and 12 million in
1945. Power consumption had risen five-fold in 20 years, from 4 billion KWh in 1919 to22 billion
KWh in 1939. In 1950, reflecting the earlier dynamism, 35 billion KWh were sold, nine times the
1919 figure. In the same period, the Gross National Product has risen only 40% over the thirty
years. Of the top 150 firms on the French Stock Exchange, 19 were utilities in 1919, and 37 in
1939. Their asset value had progressed in that period from 1.6 to 19.5 billion Francs, (from 10% to
25% of the total assets of the 150 leading companies). In urban areas, electricity was a largely
capitalistic sector, while in rural areas it remained largely in hands of small utilities. Electricité de
France was created in 1946, and took over around 20 000 concessions, while hundreds of small
private utilities that had to close their doors.
1.2
Public intervention
European electrification policies were built up in two main phases, the first one lasting until around
1925, and the second, shorter one until the beginning of World War II, by which time the richer
countries were more or less fully electrified, or somewhat later for some of the poorer countries
10
such as Ireland. The first phase could be summarised as a somewhat organised laissez faire, leaving
the initiative and funding to local bodies and private firms, and the second can be characterised by a
more active public intervention, through the injection of public money.
The first public action in the United Kingdom was to promulgate the Electric Lighting Act,
theoretically imposing the installation of one power plant in each parish, albeit without any
technical specifications. This provoked the multiplication of incompatible systems and, as a result,
there were 491 independent electricity grids by 1925 with different frequencies and voltages. Early
attempts at integration failed (in 1917 a Reconstruction Committee proposed without success the
replacement of existing dispersed generation units by large plants in 16 districts, which would have
halved the cost of power) until 1926, when the British authorities created the Central Electricity
Board using public funds to buy out less cost-effective systems and work towards better integration.
By 1935, the number of grids had been reduced to 144, but still will 43 different voltages ranging
from 100 to 480 volts. Around the same time, the public Electricity Supply Board was created in
Ireland, and confronted with more than 160 power companies with numerous different technical
standards.
As in the UK, the first French initiatives in the 19th century with electrification lead to technical
diversity. Paris was divided into six power distribution sectors, each with its own technical
standards: 110 V DC in the “Eclairage and Force” sector, 220 V DC in the “Edison” sector, 440 V
DC in the “Clichy” and “Air Comprimé” sectors, and single phase AC in the Champs Elysées and
Rive Gauche sectors. In the country as a whole, 1413 generation stations were in operation in 1908:
1000 hydroelectric and 413 thermal (coal), although not all were functioning well, 944 produced
direct current electricity, 439 alternating current, and 30 both DC and AC. The need for
normalisation and regulation was rapidly apparent.
The French power sector legislation has three major landmarks: the Law of 15 June 1906 that
defined the conditions for power transport and distribution; the Law of 1919 for hydroelectric
generation and finally the Law of nationalisation of April 1946. The 1906 law defined the
physiognomy of French electrification for the next 40 years: it gave to municipalities (or
“syndicates” of municipalities) a right to firm 40-year concession contracts with local utilities. As a
result, thousands of small utilities developed their own grids right across the country. Distribution
in the capital was unified in 1907, and in the same year a “Comité Electrotechnique Français” was
created which successfully imposed technical normalisation within the new French legislation on
electrification.
The 1919 Law imposed concessions for hydro plants of more than 500 KW, authorisations for those
below 500 KW, and the State gives itself the right to develop public schemes. This, added to the
new development of mixed public-private hydro power companies, reflected the growing tendency
to consider rivers and hydroelectricity as part of the public good. A few years later, in 1924, the
French authorities decided to develop a public subsidy scheme, operative by 1926, in order to
promote rural electrification and the interconnection of small systems.
Electrification in other Western European countries had rather similar stories, starting with smallscale, high-cost and low-load factor systems which were then networked into larger utilities, albeit
with local differences in the speed of integration. In Sweden, low-cost hydro resources in the north
led to an early determination of type of generation and the need to integrate the transmission
system, but clearly not distribution since there were about 2000 distributors as of 1957 (there are
still about 300). In Germany, where industrial self-generation plays an important role (in the 1960s
nearly 40% of electricity was still self-generated), distribution is quite decentralised (16 000 utilities
11
in 1933, 3000 in 1955, and about 1000 at the end of the 20th century). In Denmark, development of
electricity is inter-related with the development of heating systems using cogeneration.
There is also a major difference between France and other countries when it comes to
electrification. Unlike countries such as England, Germany and Switzerland, France has few
municipal companies providing services such as water and gas supply. In France, public bodies
have little tradition of economic intervention and the preference has been to rely on private firms.
As a result, of the 20 000 concessions existing in 1939, only 250 were municipal companies,
delivering energy to 5% of the users. Meanwhile, in the UK, 60% of users were obtaining electricity
from the public sector, and in Germany, public companies delivered to 50% of users, and mixed
public-private companies to another 40%. Only in the USA did the public sector have such a small
share, with only 6-7% of users receiving electricity from municipal companies.
This has not had a major impact on the rhythm of electrification: in Scandinavia, Germany and the
Netherlands, electrification was considered primarily as a desirable political goal, and as such led
by the public sector, and was largely completed by the 1930s. In France, where the private sector
played the major role and public support comes only later, electrification was completed at a similar
pace. In the mid-1930s, the electrification rate was about 95% in the Netherlands, 90% in Germany
and France, and 85% in Denmark. By the time nationalisation takes place - 1946 in France, 1948 in
Britain - electrification is almost complete.
Although the French State had early on set up a detailed framework for concessions, it did not
interfere with crucial aspects such as prices, relying on private dynamics to moderate tariffs. Not
without reason, in Paris the integration of the six sectors in a unique distribution system led to a
sharp drop in tariffs: 0.70 F/KWh in 1907 down from 1.50 F/KWh in 1900. Power constant prices
decreased by 60% over the 1919-1946 period. Electricity represented 2% of household income in
1908, 0.6% in 1938 (or equivalent to about 5% of house rent). Between 1914 and 1937, the price
per KWh tripled, while the price of bread increased seven-fold, wine by a factor of five, and a metro
ticket six-fold.
The first public intervention over prices was in 1935, in a time of growing separation between the
electricity sector and French civil society. Companies were accused of not having made enough
efforts to develop rural markets, and slowing the development of the sector in order to maintain
high prices. The higher prices for electricity in rural areas as well as the fact that electricity
companies still made good profits during the 1932 crisis period provoked further criticisms.
Associations were set up by local politicians which successfully lobbied for lower prices in rural
areas: the State promulgated a price cut of 20% in 1935, and allowed no further increase until 1937.
As it was largely concentrated in private hands, the French power sector followed general business
trends in terms of investment and prices: there were four major cycles of investment in 1897, 1905,
1915 and 1927, due to monetary stability, low interest rates and relatively high prices. Between
these cycles, there were more difficult times, with high interest rates and lower prices, the worst
being the 1932-34 period following the March 1932 banking crisis, although this was followed by a
new favourable cycle in 1937-38. The 1932 crisis had a significant impact on the sector. The assets
of the three major power companies, CGE, Alsthom and Thomson-Houston, fell from 2.7 billion
Francs to 526 million in 1934, then rose only to 960 million in 1938. Demand in 1932 fell by 2
billion KWh compared to the previous year. Companies held back on investments, and prices rose
until 1934. Due to the earlier huge investment plans, launched in the favourable 1928 period of
monetary stability, coming into operation, the profits of the major companies rose by 55% between
1929 and 1932, and remained stable over the next three years despite the general crisis. This led to
12
the companies being reproached by the leftist Popular Front government authorities and, more
generally, by French society.
1.3
An all-male leadership
Throughout its history, French electrification has been determined by the struggle of three main
forces, all male-led: first the “electrical engineers”, who prevail because of their technical
knowledge and have generally opposed any State intervention, have been against the generalisation
of the concession system, and also against concentration through huge companies and large regional
distribution systems; second the private “trusts”, that developed during the first quarter of the 20th
century and were against State regulation (tariffs, taxes) except when it served to encourage
interconnection and the development of huge systems. They developed alliances with senior public
technocrats in a pragmatic approach towards private centralisation, particularly when times were
hard, as after the 1932 crisis. Third, there have been the public “bureaucrats”, always a major and
strong feature of French society: these have been in favour of restricting free enterprise in the name
of rights of use (of ways, of water) and citizen security.
The political left has never held a definitive position on crucial aspects such as municipal versus
private companies: the liberal faction have promoted municipal companies in order to limit tariffs,
protect small users (artisans) and obtain a better status for utility workers, whereas socialists
(“guédistes”) are against it, largely reflecting the French love of centralisation. Bureaucrats have
shaped electricity regulation, from as early as 1906 designing the administrative details of the
concession system, but consciously leaving the door open to the private sector which was largely
left to its own initiatives right up to the time electrification was completed. The mobility of highranking executives between administration and industry (through the “Grandes Ecoles” system,
from which women were excluded until the 1970s) favoured the alliance between State and the
huge capitalistic sector seeking sector concentration, while the small and medium enterprises
looked for profits in rural electrification.
Even if the 1930s saw growing misunderstandings between companies and civil society which left
wounds, the 1946 nationalisation should not be seen as simply a condemnation of the previous
system: it was part of a wider nationalisation movement, including the whole banking system and
major industries, based of the then-perceived necessity to have state-owned production factors to
boost a rationally-planned economy.
1.4
Rural electrification: the examples of France and Ireland
1.4.1
France
French rural electrification begins and ends with myths. Following the end of World War I, the
“Agrarian” movement, influential in ministries and powerful in parliament, imposed its views on
the necessary modernisation of rural areas. France’s “two-speed” development had to cease. And
this reflected the first myth - that electricity was not simply a manifestation of progress but its
cause. ‘Once the lines are set up, the country is no longer rural. Numerous small industries soon
develop related to agricultural production and grid operation becomes an excellent business.’ wrote
Victor Boret of the Fédération Nationale des Collectivités Rurales. But nothing of the kind would
happen.
Here, in the field of rural electrification, the “electrical engineers”, who had quickly lost ground in
the major elements of the power sector, continued to rule. They retained the scientific knowledge.
13
They promoted rural electrification in the name of the future and massive development through
such uses as electric ploughs and harvesters. Faith in these fancy applications would last up to
World War II, even as American companies were demonstrating the supremacy of the diesel engine
for country mechanisation. This represents the second myth.
Electrical engineers’ views on rural electrification were also strongly oriented towards stand-alone
systems, and interconnection was not even considered as a long term option. A strong reason for
this approach was the feeling - based on numerous examples - that rural dwellers were not seen as
good customers by large urban companies: ‘utilities despise rural customers, we feel more like
slaves than true customers’, was how one farmers association representative put it. There was a
focus on “green energy” (the conversion of the 70 000 existing water mills into hydro power
schemes). If history gave the reason to the advocates of interconnection, most of the first rural
electrification systems relied on self-generation (hydro or coal) and more than 4000 river falls were
used with hydro-power units (of which about 1200 still operate today as independent private
producers, selling electricity to the grid).
There was an early and significant interest in self-generation from farmers associations and from
small local and urban entrepreneurs who were interested and felt confident given the concession
system: the right to exercise the concession for 40 years, and a guarantee to get the value of their
assets back plus estimated benefits for the remaining period of the concession in the event of
eviction. The Sociétés d’Intérêt Collectif Agricole (SICA) presented the first requests for subsidies
in 1919, followed by a large number of small and medium private companies. As a result, thousands
of small utilities appeared in the first quarter of the 20th century which invested and operated
decentralised power systems with little or no support (none from the State, some from local bodies
or private individuals eager to develop electricity in their own communities). They electrified, on
their own initiative and at their own risk, about one-third of rural municipalities.
This multiplicity of initiatives can be compared to the early development of English railways, where
many small and medium companies took their chances, or the recent worldwide burst of interest in
internet business development. As in these cases, many of the electricity companies will soon
disappear, absorbed by larger ones in a progressive move towards concentration, and most
resistance was ended by the 1947 nationalisation.
Although the French State was early and strongly present in the administrative process (regulation
framework, approval of projects, delegated technical supervision by weak municipalities) it did not
commit itself financially until 1923-24, when a decision was taken to develop a consistent policy of
subsidies. The first approved scheme, fully operative by 1926, included an initial maximum 50%
subsidy, reducing to 33% up to 1930, when the maximum increased back to 40%-50%. State
financial involvement reached 100 million F in 1927, 200 million in 1930, 400 million in 1931. The
objective was to encourage system interconnection: for example, HV and MV systems were
subsidised from 25% to 55%, but LV ones from only 10% to 22%. Access to loans was also
facilitated: soft loans from “Crédit Agricole” and loans to local public bodies by the “Caisse des
Dépôts”, guaranteed by municipal budgets.
This meant a dramatic shift from private to public assets in the rural power sector. Beneficiaries
were mainly municipalities, generally grouped in inter-municipal syndicates (covering 73% of the
total). In 1932, over 12 000 municipalities were receiving electricity due to the new supporting
system, and most of the rest were asking for it. In the following years, electrification progressed at a
rate of 1500 to 2000 municipalities a year. The first group to have manifested their interest in
joining rural electrification, the SICA farmers associations, represented only 5% of rural grids in
14
1932. Private management remained overwhelmingly dominant: running 93% of the systems,
against 7% in municipal operation.
To electrify the remaining parts of the territories, local bodies sought greater subsidies. In 1933, a
proposal for a 63.5% subsidy scheme was rejected but, in December 1936, the State created a
strengthened promotion scheme through the creation of FACE (Fonds d’Amortissement des
Charges d’Electrification), that took in charge 50% to 80% of the overall amortisation and financial
costs, and reduced local subsidies to rural electrification by 20 to 30%. The FACE funds came
equally from the existing income of electricity companies (based on LV usage) and from the public
budget. Despite some difficult years, the FACE is still in operation today and still supports marginal
electrification.
A typical rural electrification history: The Département of Lot (rural area, south-west of France)
1925
The city council of Labastide Murat, a village of about 880 at that time, within the Département of Lot, one
of the poorest in France, examines proposals by a small Parisian firm to provide private lighting in the
village. The council was informed the previous year about a project to create an inter-municipal syndicate for
electrification, but does not want to wait.
Since the residents are “determined to get light in the shortest of terms”, and with “the local grid being a
precious supplement to the electrification of the Département” and, above all, because the installation and
operation does not require any municipal, Département or State subsidy, the council is positive about the
project, and consequently asks the Préfecture to launch a public enquiry procedure, conforming to the
ordinances of the 1906 Law and the 1908 decree, appointing two deputies within the municipality, with
public open access to the dossier.
The enquiry proves favourable, with a positive report from the chief engineer of public works in charge of
the control of electricity distribution systems. The dossier and plans presented by the private entrepreneur
and established according to official public procedures (technical data, security constraints, maximal tariffs)
are accepted. Two conditions are imposed: the stakeholder must constitute a corporation, for which he
chooses a pompous name, the French Electrical Installation and Operation Company (Compagnie Française
d’Installation et d’Exploitation Electrique - CFIEE), and the company has to electrify a neighbouring hamlet,
Goudou, the inhabitants of which have been active in asking for the grid. The municipality then grants an
exclusive concession for a duration of 40 years, which is approved by the State representative (Préfet).
The system is installed: it includes a coal gazogene plant with a 60 HP engine and two dynamos producing
110 V, a grid of 2.4 km providing electricity to half of the houses in the village, i.e. 144 households (two of
which have 3 wires and hence 220 V) and 24 public lighting points (of few W) with a time switch.
Labastide Murat thus joins the select group of Lot cities and villages with electricity (there were 24 in 1918,
and by now 66 municipalities out of 334). CFIEE adds to the seven other private utilities already present in
the Département. But with an electrification rate under 30%, the rural and poor Département of Lot still lags
far behind the national average, with nearly reach 70% of households, and more than one French village in
three, having access to electricity.
Of the 66 electrification projects within the Département, 55 were realised on a strictly private basis; others
receiving small subsidies, mostly from the municipalities themselves which are the real motors of this first
wave of electrification with 630 000 F in municipal subsidies, against only 13 000F from the State. But even
if the State contributes little financially, it has defined extremely detailed rules for the game which are
necessary to manage the multiplicity of villages and private providers.
15
Lighting is available until 10 p.m. except on Saturdays, Sundays and market days, when ‘lights-off’ is
postponed to “a quarter of an hour after the bars’ legal closing hour”. Operation continues for about ten
years, with problems from time to time such as a dispute between the village and the utility because of a twoday interruption to service (no coal available - the firm was fined) and some electricity theft (two houses
were caught with clandestine connections). Disputes were resolved locally, sometimes with State authority
arbitrage since the municipality had asked to be relieved of its technical control authority, citing lack of
technical capacity. Administrative routines required the yearly delivery of operational statistics by the utility
to the Préfecture (those for 1927 state a consumption of 5 KWh per month per household) and periodic
negotiation between the utility and the municipality on tariff revisions (according to a national index based
on coal and manpower prices).
1933
While the village of Labastide-Murat is electrified, the remnants of the municipality (hamlets and isolated
houses) are not. The municipality has been contacted directly by some companies operating in neighbouring
areas, but the city council finally decides that the municipality will join one of the neighbouring intermunicipal syndicates, the “Syndicat Intercommunal d’Electrification du Nord du Lot”. The overall objective
being to develop the construction and operation (through a private operator, the “Union Electrique Rurale”UER) of a power distribution grid in the local rural areas.
Created in 1925 by some of the rural municipalities in the north of the Département, the syndicate operates
as follows: it funds work through soft loans (over 30 years, at a soft rate between 5% and 6%) from a public
bank, the “Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations”, on the condition that municipal budgets guarantee the cost
of work on their own territory. The syndicate gets the money back through electricity service tariffs (about
50% of tariffs go to payback the loan, while 50% remain with the private utility), and only in the event of
client non-payment do municipalities have to compensate through local taxes. The syndicate and the Union
Electrique Rurale, the private utility in charge of the system, seek out villages and clients. They also advise
farmers to be cautious: in these years, a gang of specialised crooks would visit farmers in the region
proposing non-existent connections, disappearing with financial advances entrusted by the credulous.
The Labastide Murat city council commits itself twice, in 1934 and 1935, to guarantee a capital sum finally
set at 277 700 F, meaning an annuity of 16 469 F. As a comparison, its annual budget is around 200 000 F,
and so the financial risk is about 8% of its overall budget. For neighbouring villages, usually smaller and
without any existing electric infrastructure, the financial commitment is more significant (Soulomès, a small
village next to Labastide-Murat and not yet electrified, commits itself to a sum of 105 800 F and an annuity
of 7 121 F, while its annual budget is only 36 000 F).
The grid is purchased from CFIEE and nearly all the municipality is electrified under the responsibility of the
inter-municipal syndicate. Operation is dealt with by UER which converts itself into the major utility in the
Département (87 municipalities in 1940). Before World War II, the electricity sector in Lot (for a population
of about 167 000) has 11 inter-municipal syndicates and one municipal syndicate; three major utilities,
Union Electrique Rurale, Compagnie du Bourbonnais and Société Pyrénéenne d’Energie Electrique; two
smaller utilities, Société de Gaz et d’Electricité du Limousin and Compagnie des Distributions Electriques du
Midi; plus nine single village utilities, all private ... and only one municipal company.
There is thus a multiplicity of actors, but electrification progresses: 326 municipalities out of the now 335,
i.e. more than 95% of the villages, are connected to a grid, and 120 000 inhabitants, 74% of the population,
have access to the service. Thus Lot has rapidly caught up on much of the country, even if the national
electrification rate is already close to 90%. The nine municipalities still without electricity chose to refuse:
they saw the guarantee through an inter-communal loan as too much of a risk. Their refusal reflects an excess
of democracy according to council members: the mayors consulted their voters, and many were not
convinced of the benefits of electricity, preferring to stick with kerosene lighting.
16
This proved a big mistake: the war comes and with it kerosene shortages; the nine villages in Lot (including
Saint Sauveur and Beaumat adjoining Labastide Murat) have to revert for several years to the old “calel”, the
oil or fat lamp. They have to wait nearly ten years before they are electrified by the syndicate, still the owner
of the grid all over the region, even if its operation has been conceded to the national Electricité de France
utility.
From Michel Matly, 2001, “L’électrification du monde commence à Labastide-Murat, Revue de l’Energie,
January 2001).
From 1924 to 1940, rural electrification, HV and MV lines and distribution grids together,
represented 8 billion F of investment. Most was provided in subsidies: 42% from the State (3.4
billion) and 13% from local bodies, the rest being found by the concessionaires (8% from own
funds and 37% loans, of which 8% were at low interest rates). By World War II, rural electrification
was almost complete. Some communities had chosen to refuse electrification, considering it too
risky to guarantee a public loan for a somewhat luxurious commodity of limited use (in fact, the
guarantee generally had no impact on municipal budgets, the loans being duly repaid by operators
through consumer payments). These communities were badly hit by the shortage of petroleum
during World War II and had to go back to old oil or grease lamps for lighting for several years.
There were also a number of very isolated small communities (“écarts”) that were still without
access. Rural consumption was generally low (LV use in 1940 was 39 KWH per household per
month in rural areas, against 190 KWH per household per month in urban areas) and many rural
grids were weak and could not have met any increase in demand. There was still much work to do,
and the post-war French authorities would give this task to other hands. The new public utility,
EDF, completed the remaining 10% of electrification between 1947 and the early 1950s, when
metropolitan France can first really be considered to be fully electrified. It consolidated and
modernised the overall system, preparing it for future growth in demand.
French rural electrification begun, and ends, with myths. The national company has now mostly
forgotten the earlier overwhelming efforts of both large and small private electrification pioneers,
who gave access to 96% of villages and 90% of the population. In EDF’s self-representation
(reflecting the thinking of most of its leaders and employees) in its communications (in the difficult
2004 debate on its partial privatisation) it claims rather too quickly to have electrified France. This
is not true for metropolitan France, since the earlier private and municipal sectors have a prior claim
to this, and it is not true either for the overseas parts of France where rural areas have yet to be
electrified (such as the Amazonian regions of French Guyana).
1.4.2
Ireland
The Irish government began to involve itself in rural electrification in 1939, asking the Electricity
Board (ESB) to propose a comprehensive plan to reach poor and under-equipped rural areas on the
model developed in Scandinavian countries and North America. After some delays, due to World
War II, an ambitious rural electrification programme was established, with the objective of
electrifying about 280 000 rural consumers (but excluding the most isolated areas) – which can be
compared with the 240 000 urban households having access to electricity at the time. Electrification
was heavily subsidised (50% government subsidies, initially part-funded by the Marshall plan). The
public ESB was in charge of building and operating the rural grids and a specific organisation, the
Rural Electrification Office (REO), was created.
Priority areas were selected based on the commitment of local inhabitants who were asked to
provide individual written statements that the household would accept electricity and pay for it.
17
REO “area organisers”, selected from among rural dwellers, were responsible for promoting the use
of electricity and convincing their peers to commit. Trying to minimise on costs (single phase
distribution, local poles) and employing local workers to better involve rural populations in the
process, the REO launched its programme in 1947, and after a slow start began to spread
electrification more rapidly. About 2000 households were connected in 1945, and the number of
rural clients had risen rapidly to 25 000 in 1950, and to nearly 250 000 ten years later in 1960.
Electrification was virtually complete in 1976, with more than 500 000 customers, far more than
originally envisaged. A success, since everybody had finally got access to the service, but a slow
and costly one.
In the process, grass-roots organisations were an essential support to the programme, in particular
young farmers’ and, to some extent, women’s organisations: Muinntir na Tire (People of the Land)
and Macra na Feirme (Farming Youth) supported the REO’s efforts in the early difficult years, and
later Macra na Tuaithe (Youth of the Countryside) joined the support. The Irish Countrywomen's
Association (ICA) also supported the popularisation of electrification and piped water in rural areas,
and the Irish public utility, ESB, used the support of the ICA to promote “modern” houses and
kitchens among farming women.
This is one of the very few examples, if not the only one, of women’s participation in the European
electrification process. Where are women in the history of European electrification? Nowhere until
the second World War when, with the discovery of a mass market for home appliances, women
were at last considered by the industry as a valuable target for marketing and publicity, and during
the later stages of electrification in the poorest countries such as Ireland. In most countries,
electrification was solely a male business.
18
2
The need for women: electrification in the USA
2.1
The development of the electricity sector
The first commercial applications of electricity were isolated systems built by Edison: first for a
steamship, the SS Columbia, in 1880 and then for the Hinds, Ketcham & Co printing company in
New York. As a complete system involving generation, transport and distribution, electricity
arrived in the USA with the first Thomas Edison central station on Pearl Street in New York City
which began to operate on September 4, 1882, and two years later was delivering electricity to
several thousand factories and 500 households. Early US power sector experience is then marked by
rapid development and aggressive competition between private stakeholders. At the turn of the 20th
century, according to the 1902 census, there were 3620 power stations generating a total of 1.4 GW
(at a time that England and France were completing their first 100 MW).
Electrical equipment markets were dominated by two major companies, General Electric and
Westinghouse. General Electric having resulted from the merger of two of the three large electrical
equipment manufacturers - Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston. As early as 1895,
General Electric and Westinghouse made a patent-sharing agreement in response to anti-trust
regulations that also effectively killed off external competition. They sold electrical equipment to
large companies, such as lighting companies, street railways and factories, often trading for shares
in these firms. In 1898, General Electric owned stocks worth about US$ 60 billion in utilities in
London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Boston, Chicago and many other American cities.
General Electric and Westinghouse also created in 1895 the “National Electric Light Association”
(NELA) in Chicago that would play an important role in the development of the sector. Throughout
its existence, NELA consistently tried to counteract any public initiatives, from municipal to federal
level, to enter the power business, but at the same time also collaborated with public authorities
over some aspects such as sector regulation. In 1905, General Electric created the “Electric Bond
and Share Company” to provide capital and technical assistance to weaker utilities, a means to
reinforce the concentration of power in a few hands.
As in Europe, the first significant end-use markets were non-domestic: in the 1880s, street and
commercial lighting and amusement parks; by 1888, electric traction (streetcars); by 1895,
factories; and not until the 1910s, the domestic market. In the late 19th century, only well-to-do
mansions had electricity, and electrification was only really spreading to regular urban homes
around World War I.
General Electric and Westinghouse had become eager to develop the domestic market by 1915 and
launched comprehensive programmes, through the purchase of the most promising small appliance
companies, and with specific support to utilities in order to develop domestic demand. In 1923,
General Electric announced that the domestic market amounted to 30% of the electricity market, but
represented 50% of its gross income due to higher tariffs. The domestic market quickly proved to be
the main engine of American power sector development, without the vicissitudes of other markets
caused by structural changes and economic crises. Major companies recruited female marketers and
NELA recommended utilities to open specific marketing units with female “utilisation experts”.
Streetcars were a profitable market in the 1890s but declined rapidly in the 1920s, During the
depression, hundred of traction companies went bankrupt, and manufacturers deserted the utilities:
the huge energy-consuming chemical industry bought 89% of its electricity in 1929, but only 57%
19
in 1939; the lumber industry 75% in 1929, 47% in 1939. This resulted in hard times for electric
companies: between 1930 and 1935, General Electric’s sales dropped from US$ 376 to 233 million,
and its net earnings were down by almost 50%. However, domestic energy use more than doubled
(due in particular to an 80% rise in average household consumption over the period) and the power
sector continued to grow (165 central stations were built in the first half of the depression).
The USA quickly outdistanced European countries: in 1905 the cumulated installed capacity of
European countries was more or less the same as the US installed power (3 GW) but, by the mid20s, US installed power had grown to 26 GW, while Europe’s only to 17 GW. The US
electrification rate was 8% in 1907, but this had doubled by 1912, and doubled again by 1920,
reaching 35% of the overall population. Electrification progressed mainly in the urban areas where
most of the population lived (70% in 1920, 75% in 1930). In 1920, 47% of urban households had
access to electricity. In 1921, there were one million new customers and, by 1924, two million
customers were being added annually. The prices
of electricity steadily decreased over the period:
French and US rural electrification
the 16% of the population electrified in 1912 were
paying on average 9 cents per KWh, while the 100%
France
90%
35% electrified in 1920 were paying only 7.5
80%
FACE
USA
cents, and the 70% electrified in 1930 only 6 cents.
creation
70%
60%
By the late 1930s, urban electrification was more
Public
50%
or less complete.
subsidies
40%
30%
This contrasts with the slow performance of the
REA
20%
creation
sector in rural areas: the US census of agriculture
10%
0%
reported that in 1920 only 7% of farms had access
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
to modern lighting (including electricity and gas,
and that only 2% of rural dwellers then had access
to central station service. In 1930, 13% of farms were electrified, although this figure includes
individual small generators as well as electricity from the grid. In his famous “12-minute memo”
pleading for State intervention in rural electrification, Cooke, the future leader of the Rural
Electrification Administration, writes that, in 1933, of the more than six million farms, while over
800 000 are electrified, only 650 000 (10% of farms) receive “high line” service, the balance having
individual “Delco” plants.
The situation varied significantly among regions: some, such as the North East and the Far West,
had electrification rates comparable to Europe (about one-third of farms being electrified in 1930,
not dissimilar to France). However, the situation was worse in the Mid West and above all in
Southern rural areas (where only 4% of farms had access in 1930, and only 19% in 1940). A
European visitor in the 1930s was quite surprised with the conditions of life in American rural
areas, so different to what she has been told by her US urban friends, who “still believe that
everything is for the best in the best of all countries”. A not-uncommon western view of a
developing country (just change America to Senegal, Tennessee to Casamance, for example).
“There are districts in West Virginia, East Tennessee, Kentucky, where the mode of material existence is not
different from that of the first settlers, over a century and half ago (useless to fall back upon the facile plea:
“That’s the South”. The South is American, isn’t it?). Even when I visited the better-off farms, I discovered
that a very large percentage of them had kitchens with ovens burning wood - the poor cooking in pots and
pans over a little fire on the hearth, as in the Middle Ages; that they were lighted by dim, smoking, smelly oil
lamps, that the washing of clothes was done by hand in antiquated tubs; that the water was brought into the
house by the women and the children, from wells invariably situated at inconvenient and tiring distances, for
it appears to be one of the milder manias of the American farmer to sink his well as far away as possible
20
instead of near the front door, under trees, as the European peasant does. Ordinarily, there is no icebox, so
many products that may be grown to vary the horribly monotonous diet are out of the question; they could
not be stored. Of the 50 MHP required by farms, 61% are still furnished by animals and only 6% by electric
stations. About 90% of the citizens on farms, say the statistics, do not have the lightning and the simple
comforts that have become a commonplace in most middle-class dwellings in urban communities. It is
nothing to brag about, you know.”
Odette Keun (1937) A foreigner looks at TVA, Longmans, Green and Co, New York, page 29-31
Active State support permitted rural electricity to develop sustainably, albeit without being able to
reduce the 20-year gap with Europe: rural electrification was almost completed by the end of the
1950s but not finalised until the 1960s. Besides a dominant and essentially private sector and a
minor and somewhat lethargic municipal one, rural electrification cooperatives played a
considerable role acquiring five million farm and non-farm clients in 25 years. Rural migration was
of some help: in 1935 - the first year of the REA’s creation, cooperatives originally faced a 6.8
million farm market, but finally only electrified 2.5 million: the number of rural farms had
dramatically decreased to 2.7 million in 1969, and the rural population from 30 to 10 million.
2.2
Public intervention
From the beginning, the US power sector history was marked by an aggressively competitive
market. Initially, unregulated competition between rival private suppliers led to financial failures
and municipal takeovers, which obliged public authorities to regulate as early as 1906 with the first
long-term concessions granted in Wisconsin. Standardisation was an early preoccupation of the
private companies, in order to cut costs and tariffs. Standardisation was relatively easy, because the
crucial patents belonged to very few firms, and industry development relied heavily on early crosslicensing, a practice imposed on firms by federal authorities if they wanted to avoid charges of
monopolistic control. By 1910, electricity was generated at 60 Hertz and distributed all over the
country at 120 Volts to domestic customers.
Public enterprise was also not idle: it is estimated that during the period from 1897 to 1907, 60 to
120 new municipal utilities were created each year by public referendum. In 1912, nearly one in
three American utilities were municipal with a total of 1712 public power systems, against 3659
private companies. However, most of the public systems were in small cities while the large towns
generally had private utilities, albeit with some exceptions such as Seattle. During the 1920s, the
number of public utilities and their significance in total generation steadily dropped. Private utilities
were larger, connected with more efficient grids and, by 1932, public power systems were
generating only 5% of the nation’s electricity.
Reasons for the dominant private sector involvement in the electricity business may be found in the
earlier examples of privately-funded developments such as the railways, telephone and telegraph
(unlike in Europe where the public sector was often involved), in the American decentralised
administration system that made central planning difficult, and in the limited financial capacities of
local public bodies. However, the major reason is probably the early development of large and
powerful private companies, well organised and able to lobby against public interventionism.
Through NELA or individually, the private utilities fought against public interventionism with
lawsuits, lower tariffs and public relations exercises. The three main reasons given as to why
electricity should be developed by private business were that corrupt political machines would run
utilities with patronage appointments, that they would keep user rates too low and so under-invest
in new equipment and fail to pay high enough salaries to attract the best engineers and managers,
21
and that pushing out private enterprise is socialistic and thus undesirable. The first argument was
rather serious: as a young politician, Theodore Roosevelt had estimated that about one-third of his
colleagues in the New York State legislature were corrupt. The fear was that utilities would take
advantage of this, using bribery, as in Cleveland where the utility successfully bought off the city
council to avoid municipal management.
The fiercely private sector was also very enthusiastic over, and actively participated in, the creation
of State Regulatory Agencies to oversee their “natural monopolies”, as a way to clearly discriminate
between the roles of the private and public sectors and so prevent the latter entering the electricity
business. By 1921, all States except Delaware had such regulations.
Only in the late 1920s and the 1930s did the debate between privately-driven dynamics and public
intervention take a new turn, initially because of the rural crisis. American rural areas were going
through hard times. The post-war prosperity was far behind, and farmers’ incomes had dropped by
40% between 1925 and 1930. 1932 was the worst year for farmers, with the average income a
quarter of what it was in 1919. Even if the rural population had been steadily decreasing as a
percentage of the total population, the number of farms continued to steadily increase, reaching its
peak in 1935 since when it has consistently decreased. With this rural crisis, the differences in
access to services and the quality of life between urban and rural areas appeared to reach unbearable
levels.
American debaters also looked at how some of the neighbouring countries had been dealing with
electrification. Developments in Canada were becoming a major threat to the all-private supporters,
with the successful development of the Ontario Hydro project. Established in 1906, the HydroElectric Power Commission of Ontario had become the largest public utility in America, buying
electricity from a plant at Niagara Falls (a plant it would later purchase), generating electricity and
selling it to municipalities which then distributed power “at cost” to urban and rural areas. As
progress was relatively slow in rural areas, the Ontario utility established a 50% subsidised
programme for grid extension in 1921. This resulted in accelerated rural electrification and
electricity prices far below the US average.
This “spectre of socialism”, so central in America fears, provoked a strong reaction from the NELA
which, in the interests of the major US electrical industries, opposed any public involvement in
developing and distributing electricity as unfair competition, as well as from the coal industry,
which saw subsidised hydroelectricity as a threat to mining profits and jobs. However, dams
appeared to be such a key issue, due to their multiple purposes (power, irrigation), that, in 1920, a
“Water Power Act” was passed to strengthen government supervision and abolish perpetual or longterm private leases on dam sites.
In the 1930s, a new surge of interest by municipal companies led to political fights and changes.
The creation of public utility districts in Washington (1930) and Nebraska (1933), the establishment
of regulations as in New York State, enacted in the 1930s, guaranteeing cities the right to build their
own plants and making available federal funding, reflect the growing interest of politicians and
“public power engineers” in public intervention to promote rural electrification. Some financial
scandals (such as that involving Samuel Insull) led to the “Public Utility Holding Company Act” of
1935, that gave public authorities the power to dissolve any holding company that could not
demonstrate its usefulness, as well as regulatory control over interstate shipment of electricity and
the accounting procedures of utilities.
The Canadian example stimulated various initiatives; the best know being the “Giant Power”
22
interconnection plan of 1925 in Pennsylvania. This was based on generating electricity at coalmines
and transmitting electricity through HV links to all parts of the country and developing rural
electrification. Another was the Muscle Shoals public hydropower project on the Tennessee River.
However, all such projects were voted down by State legislatures. The major success of the public
interventionists was the creation in May 1933 of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that was
designed to develop an integrated programme for flood control, and to develop navigation and rural
electrification. In the minds of some congressmen, the TVA was another dangerous step on the road
to socialism.
2.3
Rural electrification
As the private power industry was only slowly entering rural areas, farmers looked for their own
solutions. Around 35 rural electrical cooperatives were formed by affluent farmers in the decade
following the First World War, mostly in the Midwest and Northwest. In many cases, these were
small developments from other cooperatives, and generally near a source of municipal power. Some
survived, other disappeared - absorbed by local utilities. A far larger number of farmers sought
individual solutions from among the numerous possibilities under development. Various small and
medium sized companies proposed wind power generators (such as Aeroelectric, HEBCO,
Windcharger and Jacobs) and sold nearly 50 000 units between the 1930s and the 1950s.
However, most farmers bought cheaper petrol and diesel gensets, and the number of producers
skyrocketed during the prosperous years around the war (from 5 in 1911 to about 100 in 1916). The
most popular unit was the Delco set developed in 1913 which had sold about 40 000 units by 1918.
Farmers were using the electricity primarily for domestic purposes: lighting, washing machines,
irons and cream separators, and a little for other purposes such as running motors and water pumps.
In total, an estimated 200 000 individual sets were sold by 1919, and 600 000 by 1929. Until the
late 1920s, farmers with such equipment outnumbered those with grid access. Things changed in
the 1930s, with some development of private networks, but above all with State-supported rural
electrification.
The creation of the Rural Electrification Agency in May 1935, then the Rural Electrification Act of
May 1936 which established it as a funding agency, led to heated debates between promoters and
adversaries of State intervention in the power sector, as illustrated by the following exchange in the
House of Representatives in April 1936:
23
Rankin: The gentleman says electric service is quite new. Of course it is no more new in this country than in
Europe.
Meritt: If you compare [Europe] with the Eastern States or California, I think the results are as satisfactory
here that they are there.
Rankin: I wonder if the gentleman knows that in New Zealand two-thirds of their farms are electrified, [and]
in the United States 10 percent are...
Meritt: In New Zealand they deal with enormous tracts of land... Also, New Zealand is a socialistic state.
Rankin: I wonder if the gentleman knows that in France or Germany 90 percent of their farms are electrified.
Those are not socialistic states.
Meritt: No, they are not socialistic, but they are imperialistic.
Rankin: I wonder if the gentleman knows that Holland and Switzerland are practically 100 percent
electrified.
Meritt: But they are no larger than our New England.
Rankin: In understand that there is no state in New England that has even 25 percent of its farms electrified.
Meritt: I do not care to give this gentleman more time.
Cited in NRECA, (1984) The Next Greatest Thing
The REA initially proposed its scheme without discrimination, to private utilities, to state power
districts and municipal plants, to farm cooperatives and to the federal government itself. The REA
attitude towards private companies was somewhat ambiguous, between respect for their political
power and technical ability, and reproach for their minimal involvement in rural electrification. In
order to avoid conflicts and accusations of harming the interests of the private utilities, the future
Head of the REA, Morris Cooke, wrote, “This [REA] proposal does not involve competition with
private interest as is the case where municipal plants are financed. This plan calls for entering
territory not occupied and not likely to be occupied to any considerable extent by private interests.”
In his “Electrifying the countryside” book, Cooke also pointed out the lack of interest by private
utilities in rural electrification: “Private utility companies, which provide electricity to most of the
nation’s consumers, argue that it is too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads,
and that most farmers are too poor to afford electricity. A convention from the National Electric
Light Association, the voice of the US power private sector, agreed that rural service was
practicable only where lines were being extended from one well settled community to another and
farms could be picked up incidentally en route”.
Some of his criticisms of the private utilities were very practical, for example on the utilities’
technical standards, “Since utility company ideas as to what constituted sound rural lines have been
rather fancy, such costs [are] prohibitive for most farmers”; on the conditions for farmers’ access to
the grid, “In addition to paying for the energy he used, the farmer [is] expected to advance to the
power company most or all of the costs of construction”. As an example, new rural customers of the
private “Indiana General Services” utility had to pay 18% of the construction costs.
This led to well-founded criticisms over the prices for electrification announced by private utilities.
The public Power Authority of the State of New York (where Cooke was working as a consulting
member) showed that it was possible to considerably reduce the electrification costs claimed by the
companies: a mile of line in rural areas was priced at nearly US$ 2000, while it appeared possible to
install it for US$ 500 to 1000. In a 1935 memo, Cooke talks about US$ 500 to 800 per mile, and
actual average REA prices were about US$ 538 (US$ 825 with overheads) in 1939.
The private utilities first argued that they should have access to the REA credit pro-rata to their 95%
presence in the sector. They quickly reacted to the creation of the REA by formulating a common
proposal, in the name of the whole industry, to borrow all the REA financing, some US$ 100
24
million, in order to build 78 000 miles of lines and serve 351 000 clients including 247 000 farms.
At the same time, the REA could use another US$ 124 million to lend to clients to wire their
houses, install service extensions and buy appliances. This over-costed proposal, with no
commitment on area coverage, was courteously rejected.
This somehow resulted in a demarcation between private utility and REA rural electrification
schemes that was acceptable to both parties. The REA would build rural grids with other partners,
and the industry would sell electricity to the newly established grids, with most generation left in
private hands, and develop the electric commodity market. By 1936, NELA and REA were
collaborating in a permanent committee in order to prepare communication material to promote the
use of electricity in rural areas. General Electric and Westinghouse helped the REA to draw up
wiring specifications and manufacture inexpensive appliances for farm consumers.
Some utilities continued to invest in rural electrification. “Electric World” estimated that about 20
000 miles of rural lines were built in 1935 while, the same year, the REA had approved 100
projects, representing 13 000 miles of rural distribution line and 53 000 customers, although it built
only 3000 miles in its first two years. The REA welcomed the effort of utilities and took part based
on merit, arguing that its own efforts were showing these companies “that there is a mine of hidden
profit in rural electrification if they will operate on a comprehensive scale.” However, at times,
private companies built lines in the middle of areas being developed by REA cooperatives or
“creamed off” their market, just to sabotage their cost-effectiveness.
Municipal companies, whose proposals would in principle be received with particular goodwill by
the REA, showed a total lack of interest in rural electrification, with virtually zero participation. The
REA was thus mainly left to deal with cooperatives, although some executives thought that farmers
did not have the skills needed to manage local electric companies. The few existing electric
cooperatives were said to have an alarmingly high failure rate, due to poor capitalisation and poor
management, leading them in a number of cases to sell their lines at a loss to local power
companies. Cooperative leaders were generally in favour of getting involved with the new REA, but
more radical elements were worried that massive State financial and technical involvement could
ruin the cooperative spirit. In spite of some defiance, the partnership between the Federal State and
the cooperatives would prove to work perfectly well.
The REA considered that of the then five million non-electrified farms, one to three million could
be provided with a service on an economically sound basis. Its original budget was US$ 100 million
per year, only half of which was allocated in the initial years. Demand grew quickly and soon far
exceeded the REA budget. In 1937, loan requests that could not be met amounted to US$ 90
million. The budget increased from US$ 88 million in 1938 to a peak of US$ 460 million in 1942.
Virtually all loans were repaid to schedule and, even in the worst years of the depression, the value
of assets and appliance sales rose by 20% a year.
The REA’s first ten-year plan aimed to electrify about one million farms, an objective reached after
only six years. 12 000 schools were also electrified in the first five years of implementation. With
two systems established in the very year of its constitution (1935), it helped in establishing more
than 1000 systems over its lifetime, supported the creation of over 900 cooperatives that built over
1.5 million miles of lines, and served almost five million customers, of which half were farms. In
the record year of 1949, nearly 200 000 miles of lines were built and over half a million new
households connected.
25
The REA funded wiring installations, domestic electrical and plumbing appliances and equipment,
entered the telephony sector in 1949 when only 35% of farms had access to telephone, took on
water and sewerage projects, and lent money to borrowers to help them invest in economic projects
in their rural areas. In 1945, the renewal of the REA ten-year charter was the occasion for a new and
successful political fight with the National Association of Electric Companies (NAEC), the
successor to the NELA, which argued that the REA’s role was complete with over 50% of farmers
electrified. It was not until October 14, 1994, that Congress closed down the REA, but then created
the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to direct federal programmes for developing electricity, water and
telecommunications infrastructures in rural America. To date, the RUS has provided several tens of
billions of US$ in rural electric loans to thousands of communities across rural America.
In the Southern States, where access to electricity was virtually nonexistent in 1935, cooperatives
played a crucial role. As an example, in 1935, only 2% of Texan farms had access to electricity but,
by 1965, the figures had reversed with only 2% of farms not having access to a service. Two
generation and transmission cooperatives, 70 distribution cooperatives plus the public “Rural
Electric Division of Ryan” were now operating 165 000 miles of line, and covering 80% of the
State’s counties. Moreover, the cooperative sector continued to grow: it covered 246 of the 256
counties, with 500 000 rural connections, in 1971. In the 1990s, when the REA closed its doors, the
Texan electricity cooperative sector was made up of 76 cooperatives responsible for 257 000 miles
of line, 5500 jobs and 1.1 million clients.
The REA lent money to cooperatives - or municipalities - to build up electric systems. It also lent to
cooperatives in order to allow them to give loans to their members for the purchase of individual
equipment (wiring installations, electrical and plumbing appliances). Loans were soft, and rates
were low (for example, 2% for generation plants and transmission lines, 5% for distribution grids
and 7% for municipal loans in the mid-1980s compared to an average mortgage rate of around 8%
at the time), and with long duration (up to 35 years, except for loans for personal equipment which
could not exceed five years).
One major difference to private utilities is that access costs to the service were kept low. The first
cooperatives asked only a US$ 5 membership fee that gave you the right to be connected. Rural
subscribers then paid around US$ 2 to 4 per month for the basic service (about 12 KWh a month).
This was quite a sum, given that the net income of farms was typically only US$ 300 to 700 a year
(the minimum electric bill thus represented 5% to 10% of income). This reflects the REA’s
philosophy and preferences as a socially-oriented body towards making access easy, but also, as a
banking institution, having high tariff rates.
The REA’s loan conditions perfectly reflected its dual philosophy as a social body (reach the poor)
and a banking institution (make them pay). To access credit, you had to prove that your clients have
a low income, under the average for residents of your State (proving that your cooperative is
reaching poor). But you also had to present high tariffs: a revenue per customer of not less than
120% of the average revenue of existing utilities in the State, and a residential tariff not less than
120% of the average residential tariff of existing utilities in the State. Alternatively, in the case of
loans to municipalities, these had to sell electricity to residential clients at above the general prices
(more than 15 US cents/KWh in 1987, for instance) and at a sufficient level to cover the costs of
loans. Rural electrification is expensive, and rural clients, by rule, have to pay more than urban
ones.
26
2.4
Relying on women
As early as 1938, the REA were considering women to be a key target in promoting electrification,
calling for joint-membership (husbands and wives) that would bring more female voters into the
cooperatives, and for the inclusion of women on cooperative boards. The new head of its
development division, Winder, declared, “Frequently it is the women that are more active and
enthusiastic than the men in promoting a rural electrification project. We know of several instances
where the men despaired of getting an electric cooperative developed until the women went to work
and sold the idea to their neighbors”. Another REA senior executive declared “Electricity in rural
areas means more to women than it does to the men; they have social vision; they have community
interest at heart; they are not likely to get bogged down in petty dispute as men do.”
A Pennsylvania farm man gave orders to have its electricity shut off. When workers came out to the farm, his
wife replied “You take this meter and see what happens.” She went home to her mother’s leaving her
husband a note and a cold supper. After a few days, he gave in and had the electricity turned back on. “By
this time, she had her back up. As a price of peace, he had to buy her a new electric washing machine”.
REA annual report, quoted Ronald R. Kline (2000), “Consumers in the country”.
The REA hired quite a large number of women for its central staff (even if they were generally
segregated as home economists). In 1940, it imposed a joint–membership system on farmers, most
of whom were not accustomed to drawing their wives into organisation activities. At the same time,
it also enforced through its pre-allotment procedures that any new project should have at least three
women (out of nine members) on the incorporating board. At least two presidents and four vicepresidents of cooperative boards were women in the first half of the 1930s. Not all difficulties and
petty disputes were mitigated by women’s presence, as testified by one of the female members of a
cooperative board: the process of building the cooperative would improve, she wrote, only “once
we get rid of all the engineers”.
27
3
Naked electrification, clothed electrification: the development of the
domestic appliance market in Europe and the USA
3.1
The development of the domestic appliance market in Europe
3.1.1
Overall market
The early developments in electricity did not see the domestic market as an opportunity. Utilities
focussed on applications such as industry, transportation (streetcars and railways), street lighting
and telephone grids. Since the end of the 19th century, utopian descriptions of the electric home had
given a pretty good idea of what would develop, but remained no more than science fiction dreams.
At the end of the 1910s, there was an explosion of presentations on home applications of electricity:
bells, sewing machines, fans, heating systems, cookers, toasters, irons, water heaters... but they
were essentially seen as inventive bubbles in the then extraordinary craze for the new energy
source, as thingamajigs or, at best, luxury items reserved for wealthy enthusiasts.
International fairs were then considered as the best place to introduce new domestic appliances:
during the Paris 1923 household appliance fair, 130 exhibitors presented irons, vacuum cleaners and
wax floor polishers, cookers, heaters, kettles, toasters, washing and dish washing machines. Twelve
brands of electric machines were presented that year, and a year later there would be thirty. In 1928,
the first “small” washing machine was presented by Electrolux (with manual spin-drying).
However, there was almost no development a French market for such items.
Some countries developed their domestic markets more actively than others: in 1927, domestic
consumption represented 8% of the total consumption in France, and in 1939 10%; while in
England it had already reached 25%. In 1939, a French customer was using only 10% of the
electricity used by their Swedish counterpart. As a general rule, in a large number of European
countries, electric comfort would remain a luxury until after World War II and only develop widely
in the 1950s and 1960s.
Electric ironing appeared in the late 19th century, and in the 1920s electric irons became affordable.
However, their use was slow to spread: in 1926, only 10% of French subscribers had an electric
iron, and most of these were in urban areas. In 1932, in the final years of the electrification process,
only 18% of Swiss women and 6% of French ones used an electric iron.
Washing was traditionally an outside activity: wash-boats had existed in Paris since the seventeenth
century, where you would pay for cold water, hot water and for drying. Sheltered wash-houses were
being built in the nineteenth century in rural areas. Long after washing machines had been designed
- first hand driven, then mechanical driven and then electric models, “modern” European women,
although now washing inside their own houses, were still using boilers heated on top of the cooker
up to the end of World War II. In 1958, only 10% of French households had a washing machine, in
1963 only 40%, and in 1970 still only 57%.
The same story goes for other appliances in France: in 1932, only 1% of women were using a
vacuum cleaner, and 50% market penetration would have to wait until the 1970s. The first
refrigerators appeared in 1926, but nearly ten years later, in 1935, only 25 000 units were in use in
France. In 1954, shortly before mass use of home appliances really started, only 7% of French
households had a fridge.
28
In 1928, the magazine “Mon chez soi” noted that only the “bourgeoisie” used electrical domestic
appliances (but adds that “all women could become bourgeoise”). The same sentiment was
expressed by communist activists, who saw the development of domestic appliances as one more
coup by the ruling class: “The Household Arts Fair was born from the distress in which bourgeois
families found themselves when the human material of nurses and servants, one of the essential
factors of their existence, began to rarefy due to the entrance of rural and urban proletarian
daughters into factories, private administration and public services. Then, the ruling class, when it
came to undertake even the slightest bit of work, discovered that household chores were done in a
primitive way, and that these chores, as disdained as they were indispensable, had never benefited
from the progress of industry.” writes Marthe Bigot in La Révolution Prolétarienne, April 1927.
The mass domestic market was perceived of as no more than a long-term wish by public opinion as
well as by its most fervent admirers (Paulette Bernège, the editor of “Mon chez soi”, is considered
to have been the authoritative voice of the French domestic science movement). That capitalism
might be a way to disseminate home comfort widely was unimaginable to the ever more influent
French left wing. This view is reflected in the facts concerning the distribution of electric appliances
and other domestic goods over the first half of the 20th century: in 1928, there was one car for every
5.3 people in the USA, but only one for every 44 in France. In 1954, only 6% of French households
had a “comfortable” dwelling complete with WC, bathroom and central heating, while in the USA
63% of households met this standard.
Some efforts were made by European utilities in the 1920s to develop domestic uses of electricity,
primarily to smooth their load curves which were then the opposite of those met nowadays: peaks
during productive daytime hours and troughs at noon and at night. The efforts were not very
successful: they aimed primarily to develop the use of electric cookers (but these were using too
much energy and were too expensive), water-heaters and electric heating systems (but utilities were
afraid of excessive winter peak demand and did not go far in promoting these equipments). This
nevertheless did bring some results: in Paris, night use increased from 48% to 75% of day demand
between 1926 and 1935.
Meanwhile, French industry was not totally unaware of the potential in developing electrical
appliances. In 1929, it set up a “Cold Committee” to raise consciousness about the need to conserve
food, at the same time as the American NELA was creating the “Electric Refrigeration Bureau”
with similar purposes and using similar models. However, the French industrial apparatus did not
follow, and the electrical appliance mass market would remain beyond the scope of French
capitalism up to World War II. Large private industries, that had been somewhat late in entering the
power market, were now involved in battles to conquer territories, with strong competition between
large thermal and hydroelectric schemes. This left little capital and time to worry about domestic
market development.
In other European countries, the public development of electricity left little space for the private
sector. Some companies chose to enter the French power business (Swiss company and bank
activities were condemned by some newspapers as the “foreign hand of international capitalism” in
French affairs), or looked for profits in other directions, such as in electrical equipment (with the
birth of huge companies such as the Swiss Braun Bowery). Some markets for domestic appliances
did appear, but no company had sufficient capital or interest to be looking for export opportunities.
This was also the case in America, where the huge national development opportunities appeared
sufficient without needing to consider European markets. In many countries such as France,
potential customers were largely ignored until the mid-1930s.
29
Paradoxically, significant steps in the development of the European electrical appliance market
began during the period of economic depression following the 1932 crisis. European companies,
often with American partners that had largely satisfied their national urban market, were looking for
new opportunities and began to diversify toward radios, telephones and domestic appliances. But
this was short-lived, wartime arrived and domestic market development would have to wait until
after World War II.
The late and cautious development of the French domestic market for electrical appliances reflects a
specificity of its power sector: electricity in France remains an essentially male business, an
engineering matter, where women have no part to play. The domestic appliance business was no
different, and the developments during the interwar period included marketing and publicity
strategies aimed at anybody but women.
Electrical engineers were among the first to understand the importance of publicity. Nearly half of
the advertisements in popular magazines such as “L’Illustration”, or more specialised ones such as
“La Nature” and “La Science et la Vie” (still one of the most popular science magazines in France),
dealt with electrical equipment. However, this publicity was addressed to men - potential clients
were department stores and resellers, not female users. Very few women appeared in the equipment
catalogues before the end of World War II. There are some modest exceptions: the charming “Suzy
Calor” became the emblematic figure of the Calor company in 1925, but there were no woman in
leading roles in the company, not in the firm’s general directorate (16 men) or as regional agency
heads (13 men).
Slowly, however, in the late 1930s, when Europe was seeing crises that would climax in World War
II, a growing recognition of women can be perceived. Advertisements begin to talk about
mechanical slaves and women’s liberation, but the portrayals of women are ambivalent. Sometimes
they are modern and free - possibly appearing even dangerous to some – and in others they are
model wives and mothers, serving their husbands and families. Little girls are also portrayed, happy
and amused by the domestic “toys” given to them by electrical engineers. Images will vary
according to equipment: in the case of the vacuum cleaner - the warrior woman, the electric witch,
the Amazon riding the equipment; in the case of the iron, the submissive worker bending over her
linen; in the case of the washing machine, the little girl (using it is child’s play) or the modern
young woman, in contrast to the older one washing her linen on her knees.
This final image will come to dominate after World War II when women, and no longer men, are
considered by industry to be the vectors
Equippment of households (France)
of modernity. Women then become the
100%
main target of communications about
90%
electrical
domestic
appliances.
Publicity builds up an image of young,
80%
Car
modern and affluent woman, a model
70%
essentially coming from the USA. The
60%
Washing machine
slogan of the “Société de Paris et du
50%
Rhone” - Le confort dans le home – has
40%
Refrigerator
clear American overtones and is used
30%
to promote vacuum cleaners and wax
Television
20%
floor polishers. However, liberation
10%
through electrical equipment is still
0%
sometimes seen as an ambivalent or
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
even a negative goal, and even put in
30
these terms to the female public. One company advised the future users of its washing machine to
pre-wash the linen by hand, fearing to confer an image of female leisure - or laziness - on the
purchasers of the new equipment.
The French electrical appliance market lagged the US one by some thirty years. It was only really
fully developed some forty years after the completion of electrification.
The market dynamics of French domestic commodities reflects the differential growth in household
equipment that can be seen in most European countries: initially a more dynamic growth in cars,
followed by washing machines and refrigerators, with the latter then dominating, followed by
television, while the car’s and the washing machine’s penetrations slow.
3.1.2
Rural market
Development of the appliance market is almost non-existent in French rural areas during the
electrification period. Benefits of electrification are limited to light and radio. In some of the
poorest regions, such as in Vendée, the only notable consumption in the 1930s is not even in the
home, but stable lighting.
In the mid-1960s, rural consumers were still cautious purchasers of electrical appliances. Market
trends show that the washing machine, the usual frontrunner in equipment penetration everywhere,
was significantly more common than the refrigerator in rural areas.
France
1965
Spain
1966
Ireland
1965
Farmers
Agricultural workers
Centres with more than
500 000 inhabitants
Between 95 and 500 000
Between 10 and 95 000
Between 2 and 10 000
Urban
Rural
Washing machine
26%
21%
63%
Refrigerators
24%
17%
47%
54%
39%
17%
35%
22%
33%
27%
10%
25%
12%
This trend is confirmed when considering the development of the Irish market: while rural
electrification was in process, refrigerators and freezers had difficulties in penetrating the overall
market, and especially the rural market, but would eventually achieve higher rates in the second half
of the household equipment growth.
31
Appliance market in Ireland
Urban
consumers
Rural
consumers
Appliances
Washing machine
Refrigerator or freezer
Vacuum cleaner
Electric kettle
Electric cooker
Washing machine
Refrigerator or freezer
Vacuum cleaner
Electric kettle
Electric cooker
1960
15
9
33
37
25
12
5
10
40
18
1965
35
25
30
39
30
22
12
12
48
20
1970
47
51
50
46
36
32
21
16
55
25
1975
57
72
60
52
42
43
48
23
58
31
1980
70
98
75
68
50
60
100
47
70
37
1985
87
111*
86
86
56
69
114*
63
78
40
* Some consumers have both refrigerators and freezers
Source: Rural electrification in Ireland, Michael J. Shiel (World Bank, 2004)
A detailed analysis of the Spanish market is revealing in two aspects: apart from a radio, largely
present in the 1960s, consumers were more interested in items that reinforced their independence
from a still weak economy, such as a sewing machine, than in items that cut distances and
connected rural areas to cities and to the wider world, such as cars or televisions.
Equipment rates and interests in purchasing consumers goods, Spain (percent)
City/village
size
(population)
> 500 000
95 000 – 500 000
10 000 – 95 000
Have
90
90
75
57
54
Think
necessar
y
100
77
86
90
85
Have
89
91
76
59
63
Think
necessar
y
99
80
84
91
83
47
79
33
31
40
51
53
6
16
41
20
13
82
66
83
10
32
32
24
18
58
39
33
10
15
11
16
Have
Piped water
Radio
Sewing machine
Bath or shower
Washing
machine
Electric
refrigerator
Ice chest
Water heater
Television
Telephone
Motorcycle
Car
Vacuum cleaner
Record player
2000 – 10 000
Have
82
84
68
47
39
Think
necessar
y
98
74
81
80
70
44
74
54
18
17
Think
necessar
y
99
78
78
75
50
73
27
62
10
49
9
75
57
65
10
28
26
18
8
34
30
21
13
13
6
9
6
68
53
47
10
24
20
14
5
9
5
8
12
5
1
2
9
42
38
33
21
16
12
7
Source: Instituto de Opinión Pública 1966.
Moreover, rather than electricity, the one commodity now seen as fundamental was piped water.
This is perhaps hardly surprising: in 1966 in Spain, more than half of rural dwellers were still
waiting for piped water; and water, bathrooms, showers, water heaters, washing machines were
seen as essential items by rural households, far more than other electric appliances. In France, in
32
1962, 42% of rural dwellers had tap water in the kitchen, and 28% were connected to water grids.
By 1970, 78% had piped water. In rural areas of France, Spain and Ireland, the late development of
electricity and use of electrical appliances was less of an issue than water grid extension in the
1960s and 1970s: much had still to be done in that area.
Water was a very important issue for households, but primarily for women, "Many men in rural
Ireland are not yet fully aware of the advantages of piped water supply. Very often they will get a
water supply with the advantage of the stock in mind rather than the housewife, and very often if
the stock don't want water, the housewife has to do without it also. Let your menfolk know you will
not tolerate such treatment. Tell them you don't want to end up in your old age with a bad heart
from dragging water over long distances." was the message of Irish ICA members in the 1960s
(Shiel, 2004)
This overwhelming desire for water somehow contrasts with the cautious interest shown towards
electricity at the time of it spread to rural areas. Many farmers considered electricity as a luxury
item, doubtful of its real purpose, and refused to participate in public schemes. In France, most of
the electrification projects that succeeded were driven by some enlightened notables, often
represented on villages councils, who sold the idea of electricity to doubtful farmers as a necessary
progress. A number of communities voted against the arrival of electricity. Electrification in Ireland
was difficult and slow not only due to social parameters - rural poverty, dispersed housing - but also
because of the reticence of farmers. ICO activities in Ireland were to persuade rural community
members to get electricity, as much as to respond their demands.
Was this lack of interest in electricity really due to the stubbornness of backward-looking French
and Irish farmers? The reason could be elsewhere: that electricity comes alone, naked, offering little
more than light and radio. Electrification included none of the available electrical commodities,
already widely disseminated elsewhere, and none of the services that electricity could bring to
households, and to women in particular. Without electrical appliances, European electrification is
“bare” electrification: bringing some bulbs, cutting out some old gas or paraffin lamps, but little
more. No wonder it had only a limited value for farmers and, above all, for their wives.
3.2
The development of the domestic appliance market in the USA
3.2.1
Overall market
The same year as Edison was establishing its first central station in New York, it was also building
up a number of companies to manufacture individual generators and light bulbs, with a virtual
monopoly that would last for several years. By 1900, its generation enterprises were transformed
into Consolidated Edison of New York - a major worldwide utility - and its manufacturing
enterprises were merged to become General Electric. Another company, Westinghouse, had entered
the sector with an alternating current motor capable of powering most electrical appliances, after
buying licences from its inventors, the Italian scientist Galileo Ferraris and the Hungarian engineer
Nikola Testa.
In the 1900s, the first small electrical engines were being sold to households for the customers to
connect them to existing mechanical sewing and washing machines. Shortly afterwards, by 1910,
purpose-designed electrical sewing and washing machines appeared on the market, together with
the first electric vacuum cleaners (an electric fan hooked up to a carpet sweeper) as well as
appliances based on the electric resistance coil (irons, toasters, kettles, hair curling sets). In the
1910s, items such as electric refrigerators and dishwashers were still unreliable or very expensive,
33
and were no more than novelties for very rich households.
Led by the major companies, research played a dominant role in electrical appliance development.
In 1900, General Electric set up the first American industrial research laboratory, shortly followed
by Westinghouse. In the 1920s, two out of every three researchers were working in the electricity
sector. The two companies quickly moved from electrical equipment and light bulbs to mass-market
appliances: fans, heaters, irons, percolators; then later vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, water heaters
and stoves; buying small appliance manufacturers and then developing their own products.
Mass production techniques enabled the prices of sewing and washing machines as well as vacuum
cleaners to fall consistently throughout the 1920s. In 1921, there were 880 000 washing machines,
of which 85 000 were powered by electricity. Electromechanical thermostats, introduced in the
1920s, improved the competitive position of electric stoves versus gas ones (even though the
electric range would not really cut into the market of its gas competitor) and boosted sales of irons,
toasters and water and space heaters. By the end of the 1930s, the automatic washing machine
appeared, one that agitates and spin-dries, that will, together with the dishwasher and the clothes
dryer, conquer the American domestic market during the World War II years.
Improved refrigerators began to appear in the 1920s due to successive inventions (sealed motor,
Freon coolers, etc.). In 1921, the utilities estimated the number of fridges owned by their customers
as follows: in Boston and Baltimore, 200; in New York, 150; in Philadelphia, 50; and 2500 in
Detroit due largely to the recent involvement of the car industry in the appliance business. General
Motors’ newly-created Frigidaire Company was selling refrigeration units designed to fit into
wooden ice chests, at prices starting from US$ 190. By 1923, 56 companies were active in this area
and 20 000 refrigerators were in use.
Major developments were seen in 1926 when, as a result of something like 15 years of research,
General Electric invested US$ 18 million in an assembly line and would go on to sell 50 000
“Monitor tops” refrigerators in the first three years. In the 1930s, refrigerator prices plunged due not
only to mass production benefits but also to tough competition during the depression: in 1934, you
could find refrigerators for under US$ 100, half the 1930 minimum price. The NELA had
established an “Electric Refrigeration Bureau”, grouping 75 manufacturers and 4000 utilities, with
the objective of spending what amounted to 10 cents per metered customer in a massive publicity
campaign for the electric refrigerator, with the aim of selling one million units per year. The
campaign was launched in 1931, and by May of that year 375 000 units had been sold, which
represented a US$ 20 million increase in annual energy consumption. The same year, General
Electric produced its millionth unit. In 1936, there were two million electric refrigerators in use and
in 1941, 3.5 million. The market was then dominated by four major companies: Kelvinator (the
company credited with having sold the first domestic refrigerator, then owned by American
Motors), General Electric, Westinghouse and Frigidaire. Collectively, they had opted for the
electric-compression refrigerator over the gas-absorption option, the latter having been promoted by
weaker companies but now marginalised.
The widespread use of such equipment would seem astonishing to a European observer of the time:
a 1921 survey in Philadelphia indicated that, depending on type of housing, between 64% and 91%
of households had an electric iron, between 33% and 84% a vacuum cleaner, between 5% and 32%
an electric washing machine.
Another survey, conducted by the Ferry-Hanly Advertising Company in 1926, set out to determine
the buying habits of small-town women. Selecting 227 upper and lower middle-class homes and
34
167 wealthier homes, the Company interviewed a total of 394 women from nine small towns within
a 150-mile radius of Kansas City. The survey, which explored sales channels and the influence of
publicity on small-town housewives’ buying habits, gives an impressive image of the housing and
equipment conditions of the American upper and middle classes. 84% of the surveyed families had
a telephone, 80% a bathroom, 72% a car, 53% a piano and 47% a central heating system. 97% had
access to electricity, with an average of about three electrical appliances: 78% had an electric iron,
57% a vacuum cleaner, 48% an electric washing machine, 47% electric curling irons, 34% a radio,
30% an electrical toaster, but only 1% an electric refrigerator (four families of the sample). On this
last finding, the director of research, Mary E. Hoffman, notes, “…while it happened that the actual
housewife interviews yielded only a small percentage of electrical refrigerators, the dealers
interviewed were invariably enthusiastic over the market possibilities for this item. A Frigidaire
dealer in a town of 2,500 inhabitants, who had had the franchise only 90 days, had made seven
installations in the last 60 days and claimed his greatest drawback is being unable to fill orders on
account of slow production.” The same survey highlighted the importance of advertisements for
selling at least two of the items: washing machines and radios.
As a final example, in 1929, a survey among Ford workers showed that 98% of the families had an
electric iron and 50% an electric washing machine. Electrification never delivered only lighting, as
was often the case in many European homes (with the notable exception of some countries such as
Sweden). Although there were major regional differences in the US (in the late 1940s, around 70%
of households in the Pacific States and the North West States had refrigerators and washing
machines compared with less than 20% in Southern States), US equipment rates were on average 20
to 30 years ahead of those in France and other Southern Europe countries, and these would only
catch up in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Credit played an important role in the building up of the large appliance market. Before the 1920s,
people only borrowed money to buy a house or start a business because, in theory, credit had to be
invested in something productive in order to make money and pay back the debt. By the 1920s this
was changing, and American households began to borrow money to live more pleasantly - not to
produce but to consume. With instalment plans and easy payments, the development of consumer
credit was dramatic; with 60% of cars, 70% of furniture, 80% of heavy electrical appliances and
radios, and 90% of sewing machines, pianos and washing machines bought on credit during that
decade.
Marketing and publicity were widely used to back up the process. In 1922, General Electric
integrated all of its products in a simple line under its symbol, the GE monogram. Large publicity
campaigns, with impressive budgets, were designed to sell appliances: the advertising budget for
electrical appliances rose from US$ 2 million to US$ 12 million between 1922 and 1930. Marketing
and publicity were focused on a specific public: women - with campaigns such as the “Any
woman” campaign to show how electrification could liberate the housewife’s energy. Slogans
conveyed messages such as “Any woman who does anything that a little electric motor can do is
working for three cents an hour”, “The wise woman delegates to electricity all electricity can do”,
and “The silent servant in the home” with images of Mrs Modern Woman, her Modern family (Mr
Modern man, Bob the modern boy and Ann the modern girl) and their silent servant, Electricity,
which does most of the household chores. Typical advertisements depicted a housewife dedicated to
her home, with recurring uses of domestic science ideas concerning efficiency and progressivism.
Private utilities consistently supported the manufacturers’ efforts to develop the electrical appliance
mass market, because it would help them to sell more electricity. In the late-1920s, the NELA was
urging each utility to establish a “home lighting department” staffed with - preferably female 35
home economic specialists. NELA guidelines suggested that such specialists should be women “of
good breeding” with college education, who would give lectures on lighting and other uses of
electricity, collaborate with builders and architects, and work actively with any committee that gave
access to other women.
The Indiana-Michigan Power Company, using door-to-door approaches, sold irons, toasters,
percolators and fans in the 1920s; and in the 1930s, once these had become commonplace, the
utility sold more expensive items such as electric ranges, refrigerators and water heaters. Utilities
developed their market through various marketing and sales techniques: door-to-door selling, poster
contests, parades, etc. Some offered inexpensive wiring services payable in monthly instalments.
Utility salesmen and women regularly visited houses with new products sold at a low price.
Lighting could be paid for in twelve monthly instalments. Since homeowners rarely cut back on
powerful lighting or gave up using a new appliance once they had become accustomed to it, the
benefits were virtually permanent and generally impressive. In 1928, market development of
domestic appliances contributed US$ 555 million to utility revenues.
3.2.2
Rural market
Built up by the private sector, the link between electrification and the domestic appliance mass
market was also a major feature of cooperative rural electrification. The Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA), a forerunner of what will be the general organisation of American rural
electrification, set up early on a specific agency, the Electric Home and Farm Authority (EHFA), to
help farmers purchase electric appliances. The EHFA had arrangements with appliance makers to
supply electric ranges, refrigerators and water heaters at reasonable prices. These appliances were
sold through local companies and electric cooperatives, and a farmer could purchase them using
low-cost loans provided by the EHFA.
Even before the creation of the REA, its future leader, Morris L. Cooke, was writing “… the rural
line, once built, cannot vitally affect farm life unless the farmer is able to make use of the energy it
brings. In the past many farmers who felt that they might scratch enough cash for an extension
hesitated to do so because they could not also meet outright the expenses of wiring their house and
barns and purchasing equipment. The TVA and some of the private companies of the South East
have shown that the way to successful operation is through low rates inducing high consumption.
But high consumption demands appliances - appliances whose cost is not a drain on but a
supplement to farm income and farm comfort.” Private sector lessons were learnt: when in 1935
Cooke was describing the three-year 15 000 farm electrification plan of the private Georgia Power
Company, he immediately translated it into 6000 radios, 5000 refrigerators, 1500 electric ranges
and 750 electric water heaters.
Increasing the consumption of cooperative members was seen by the REA as essential to make
systems cost-effective and insure loan repayment, in other words to make the overall scheme work.
Preliminary studies estimated that average consumption should be in the range from 80 to 100
KWh/month in order to ensure that cooperatives could repay their loans on time. This was quite
ambitious since the national average was then around 60 KWh/month, but the REA promoters
believed that farmers would meet this target through using electricity not only at home but also in
their agricultural activities. The figure was also comparable to the 90 KWh/month used on average
in already-electrified farms (a figure later seen to have been overestimated because it included high
consumption irrigation agriculture in the West).
36
In fact, the first cooperatives failed to meet this target, members were getting connected to obtain a
light, buy a radio and an iron, and maybe one large appliance, but most kept their consumption low.
In 1937, half of the cooperative members had minimum bills. Based on the early experience of the
TVA, which achieved far better results in terms of energy consumption, the REA quickly reacted by
building up a network of “utilisation experts”. It hired a staff of agriculture specialists (all men) and
home economists (all women) that worked with local extensionists and appliance dealers to
promote agricultural and domestic uses of electricity. The REA also mounted, in 1938, a “circus”
named “The Demonstration Farm Equipment Tour” showing refrigerators, electric stoves, hay
dryers, etc.
The REA worked with the TVA’s EHFA and established a credit network through 25 000 dealers.
This provided financing for house wiring, the purchase and installation of electrical appliances and
also modern plumbing equipment. Loans were limited to a period not exceeding two-thirds of the
assured life of the equipment, with interest at approximately the prevailing rate for government
obligations. Opening up a new and extensive market for electrical and plumbing manufacturers and
trades, through farmers’ purchasing power, was also marketed by the REA as a way of giving
labour and industry a large share of its programme, and this responded to a major preoccupation of
the Federal government in this time of depression.
There were a few problems due to some cooperatives creating retail sale outlets for appliances, seen
as unfair competition by private competitors, or because leading members of a cooperative would
set up their own private business to sell appliances, and again conflict with existing local dealers.
But, overall, things worked. When farmers became connected, they now tended to buy sufficient
electrical appliances that they used at least as much energy as city dwellers, which helped to offset
the higher costs of bringing electricity to the country.
Domestic appliances were such a priority for farmers that they were slow to use electricity to
enhance their production methods. Female home economists were doing a better job - or meeting a
better market demand – than the male agricultural specialists. Rural consumers were quick to buy
appliances as shown in the following diary extract of a rural farm, in thirteen months (from August
1940 to September 1941, the farm acquired, in this order, lighting at home, a washing machine, a
radio, lights in the barn, an iron and, finally, a refrigerator.
Diary of Elbert and Erma Cassel, Verden, Oklahoma - electric cooperative members 1939-50
Signed up for cooperative membership
July 27, 1939
Uncle Lark wired house
June 1, 1940
Got electricity
August 8, 1940
August 26, 1940 October Bought a washer
Bought a radio
29, 1940
Wired milk farm
January 6, 1941
Bought iron
July 25, 1941
Bought refrigerator
September 19, 1941
Wired Dutton church
January 21, 1942
Bought mixer, radio
December 3, 1942
Bought deep freezer
December 31, 1948
Bought sewing machine
August 30, 1950
Source Oklahoma Electric cooperative (2002), quoted by Wolman (2004) The new deal for electricity in the
United States, 1930-1950
37
Initially, reaching a 40 KWh/month target within one year of connection seemed an impossible
goal, but by now it was proving easy. In 1940, twelve-months after a project had been energised, a
survey showed the cooperative members had purchased the following appliances: electric irons and
radios 83%, washing machines 63%, vacuum cleaners 48%, toasters 36%, electric motors 27% and
electric water pumps 16%.
In one year, the consumption of these rural customers had reached the French rural 40 KWh/month
average of the time. In 1942, the average REA customer was using 71 KWh/month, and this
consumption would increase by at least 10% per year until the mid-1950s (with a maximum 17%
growth rate in 1947, passing 100 KWh/month).
Women were present throughout the process: they were the primary target and the main
beneficiaries of electrification. The REA’s records have many testimonies of women
enthusiastically describing these benefits. The one below is illuminating because it is so
wonderfully systematic, a perfect reflection of the message the REA women were sending to the
farm women.
The first benefit we received from the REA service was lights, and aren’t lights grand? My little boy
expressed my sentiments when he said “Mother, I did not realise how dark our house was until we got
electric lights (...). Recently I read in the REA news that the radio was the most popular appliance that has
been bought. So like the rest of the people, we changed our storage-battery radio into an electric radio. This
was our next benefit. Next we bought an electric refrigerator. Of course, next after a refrigerator comes
making ice cream in the trays. We changed our washing machine from a machine driven by gasoline to one
driven by electricity as our next improvement. The machine was all right with gasoline, but, my, the noise it
made. It is such a relief to do the laundry in peace and quiet. We changed our pump for the pressure tank in
our bathroom and water system from a hand pump to an electric pump. I did not buy an electric iron at first,
as I do not do my own ironing. I was impressed when I did, at how improved much irons were since I moved
to the country. (...) The next benefit we received from the current was our electric stove. We were so anxious
for the current that we wired the house many months before the current was turned on, and we wired our
kitchen for an electric range. (...) Before the current was turned on, when anyone was asking me what
appliance I wanted most, I always answered that I wanted a vacuum cleaner. [Before], when I finished
[cleaning] I was choking with the dust, the carpet was not clean, and I was in a bad humor. Now with the
vacuum cleaner, I can even dust the furniture before I clean the carpet, the carpet gets clean, and I stay in a
good humor. So you see I am thoroughly enjoying the many things that electricity has made possible, and I
am enjoying life more because I have more time to spend visiting my friends, studying and reading, and
doing the things that make life richer and fuller.
Rose Dudley Scearce, member, Shelby (Kentucky) Rural Electric Cooperative
This leads to another interesting conclusion in comparing American electrification with the later
trends in Europe which invariably show a significant differential between urban and rural area
populations, with the latter being slow to purchase household equipment. In America, only five
years after launching the REA programme, the cooperative members’ take-up of equipment was not
far from the national (urban and rural) average: 84% have irons (95% nationally), 55% have a
washing machine (60% nationally) and 33% a refrigerator (56% nationally). Equipment rates were
generally similar except for certain items, less popular in rural than in urban areas, such as vacuum
cleaners and small cooking appliances (electric ranges, toasters, coffee makers, etc).
38
Home appliances in the USA, 1940
Appliance
Iron
Radio
Washing machine
Refrigerator
Toaster
Vacuum cleaner
Coffee maker
Hot plate
Range
US wired homes
95%
81% (*)
60%
56%
56%
48%
33%
17%
10%
(*) includes non-wired homes
Source: Ronald Kline, (2000) Consumers in the country
39
REA customers
84%
88%
55%
33%
29%
21%
8%
15%
4%
4
The holy alliance between women and industry
4.1
Domestic science: rationalising and modernising housework
The specific features of American electrification are largely due to the existence of the women-led
movement, born in the late 19th century, commonly referred to as the “domestic science movement”
that aimed to rationalise and modernise housework. This movement received early support from the
political authorities: it was responding to major social stresses created by the industrial revolution;
it was based on American well-established values and further constituted a grassroots barrier to the
growing socialist ideas. It also largely fitted with the objectives of the energy, food and appliance
industries, to which it will give and in return receive much.
Born in the USA in the late 19th century, the new doctrine would be referred to as scientific
housekeeping, home science, progressive housekeeping and, more popularly, domestic science, then
later as home economics. It was based on the view that the development of industry had created a
totally new situation, sending men out to work and leaving women with household chores. Due to
the industrial revolution, women had gradually lost their traditional paid activities and were left
with the repetitive and low-skill household chores. This not only led women to become frustrated
through being deprived of most of their productive activities, it also created a complex due to the
recognition that men did things better - in a professional, scientific and mechanised way.
This led to the “separate spheres philosophy”, a fundament of the domestic science movement: the
public sphere, mostly reserved for men, and the domestic sphere, the reign of women - a division
comparable to the Marxist notion of productive and reproductive spheres. The mission of the
domestic scientist was to make the domestic sphere as efficient and mechanised as the men’s public
sphere, without attempting, as feminists do, to get a larger share of the public sphere for women.
Eliminating deadly drudgery and incoherent primitiveness from household tasks is the objective of
domestic science. Modernising the home was considered possible by introducing the same
principles and methods that were being used in male-led industry. Women’s daily routines could be
thoroughly examined and optimised. Cooking becomes a chemical science, where proteins, calories
and vitamins become a daily preoccupation. Cleaning and washing are analysed and optimised, and
hygiene becomes a key word. Domestic time and space management solutions are proposed to
women through courses and magazines. Specialists are also keen to encounter and then divulge
technical innovations coming from laboratories and factories, such as gas lighting, hand- then
gasoline- powered washing machines, iceboxes, to support their efforts to rationalise and mechanise
the home.
Introducing scientific principles and mechanisation to the very working field where women are left
alone, i.e. housework, is supposed not only to alleviate the hard work of daily chores, it is also to
give them back their self-confidence and self-respect. “Progressive women have perceived, with a
growing sense of freedom, how what seemed such endless drudgery can, by a clear understanding
of underlying principles and the application of scientific methods, be changed into a beautiful
harmony of law and order.” claimed one of the domestic science organisations. “That is why we
plead for the right education of the housewife, not that she shall dust her house, but that she shall
know how to infuse into the work that interest and enthusiasm which it has lost owing to
circumstances over which she has no control.” writes Ellen Richard, one of the leading lights of the
domestic science movement.
40
From the start, domestic science was well received by politicians and social reformers. Its ideas
were based on the dominant 19th century home ethics, where the home was the “nursery of the
citizen, the unit of social progress, the germ of Anglo-Saxon civilization.” and the American
woman “the nation’s best educator and religious guide”. In 1841, Catherine Beecher writes in her
“Treatise on domestic economy”, “The proper education of a man decides the welfare of an
individual, but educate a woman, and the interests of a whole family are secured”, and Frances
Willard, the Founder of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, argued “If I were asked the
mission of the ideal woman. I would reply: it is to make the whole world homelike”. Cleaning was
not only cleaning but “a fine action, a sort of religion, a step in conquering the devil, for dirt is sin.”
Domestic science also appeared as an alternative to dangerously spreading ideologies: the final
decades of the 19th century saw repetitive economic stress, culminating in the 1893 crash, with
wage cuts, unemployment, strikes, protests and the spectre of socialist revolution. Domestic
scientists and their allies in the reform movement saw the well-run home as the most powerful
guardian of civil peace: “The man who has such a home is not going to join in rash movements of
any kind, or in any way jeopardise the possession of that home” (The home and the labour problem,
author unknown). “If rigid instructions for food and feeding were implanted in the minds of our
girls during their early school days, the labour element would not be such discontented individuals”
writes Tyson Rover in “Household news” in 1893. “I am fully persuaded that by using every
possible means to educate the wives and daughters of working men to be intelligent home makers,
we can do more towards the solution of the labour problems than all the anarchists, the communists,
the socialists or even the labour organisations have ever been able to do.” says an Omaha clubwoman.
The American Federal government was easily seduced by the domestic science movement with its
applications for rural women. The issue of overworked rural woman was then taken very seriously
by the American authorities, due both to real facts and also some myths: in the late 19th century a
commonly accepted opinion (which would later prove to be false) was that a large percentage of
farm women were to be found within the insane population as a result of their overwork and
isolation. In 1906, President Roosevelt created a “Country life commission” that contributed to the
establishment of a vast network of rural reform public and private agencies. These included the
USDA cooperative extension service, that took on an even more important role during the 1920s
depression and 1930s New Deal, and the “Office of Home Economics”, in charge of modernising
rural women’s lives and alleviating their workload through domestic science principles. World War
I shortages also made home economics an important part of the war effort in the USA. Domestic
specialists acquired legitimacy and emerged from the war as a nationally recognised profession.
In the 1920s, domestic science timidly entered Europe. France (source of the “household arts” term
abhorred by US home economists because it suggested practical skills rather than scientific
principles), discovered it through Paulette Barnège, the founder of the “Ligue d’organisation
ménagère” (Domestic organisation league), who introduced ideas on Fordism/Taylorism in the
household and the scientific organisation of housework. But it had little impact on the dominant
trends of politics and industry. “Domestic economy is still largely medieval in Europe” sighed
Christine Fredericks, one of the 1920s leading figures of American domestic science, after a
European lecture tour.
While, for the early home economists, housewives were supposed to find self-respect in modernised
housework; new dominant, and rather contradictory, models then appeared and the message had to
be adapted for the new generations. Efficiency took over from moral superiority, and the domestic
heroine gave way to the “courtesan” type of wife, possibly due to the pervasive influence of the
41
cinema, a view acknowledged by Good Housekeeping magazine in a 1935 feature entitled “What
Price Beauty?”, “Most women spend more conscious effort nowadays on their appearance ... the
films have had much to do with...” (quoted by Catherine Horwood, 1997). Hating housework had
become acceptable - as long as it did not stop one doing it. Cooking, that has been such an
important mission, such a scientific activity, now became a simple task that can be mastered in a
few lessons. “Lack of the faculty for success in homemaking, while biologically abnormal, is no
disgrace.” argued a female professor of home economics at Boston University. Housework now
becomes a fate, concomitant with marriage: the wife “cannot abandon it for another one, no matter
how difficult she finds it, not how it bores her.”
4.2
Women needed industry to popularise home economics ideology
At the turn of the 20th century, America has made quite a number of improvements in terms of
gender equity, and was proud of it: better educational opportunities for women, a handful of
females breaking into most of the ‘male’ professions. “These achievements had only inspired
Americans of both sexes to feel complacent about the remarkable emancipation enjoyed by the
ladies of the world’s most enlightened nation.” (Shapiro, 2001). Domestic scientists see their
revolution as beginning where feminists leave off, and bringing about far more dramatic changes.
They share with early feminists the ideal of a woman “with a brisk, manly mind”. However, they
have a quite different point of view: while feminists argue for equality or even superiority of
women over men, domestic scientists believe that women have to improve quite a lot to reach
men’s level. Domestic science’s first descriptions of housewives is often contemptuous, perhaps to
enhance the necessity of their teaching. Drudgery, their master word, “does not only describe the
endless round of housework but also somehow depreciates the lack of enlightenment of the
housekeeper (syn. donkeywork)” (Shapiro, 2001). But this is to change over time, as domestic
scientists learn and teach the power of women’s decisions over their households, and finally over
the overall economy.
They will fight against the degrading identification of housework with servant’s work, underlining
the dignity and respectability of the home and home tasks, and finally of women. The vision of the
housewife they aim to project is not only the young and modern woman, but also the educated one.
Their model is initially the dainty and refined lady of the late 19th century, then the house manager
and engineer of the early 20th century.
While feminists fight for a share of men’s privileges, a place in a man’s world; domestic scientists
worked to build up a parallel set of privileges and a female world that would mirror the male one.
To domestic scientists, women should not compete in the man’s world but recreate the man’s world
in their own sphere. “Our young women, ignorant of the home training, persist in fitting themselves
for business rather than for household life” complained Ellen Richards, the first president of the
National Household Economic Association.
But domestic scientists also wanted “a career, access to the modern world, the world of science,
technology and rationality.”(Shapiro, 2001). Ellen Richards, a Vassar graduate, was the first female
student to be admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1870, as a “special student”.
Aware that she was a not-that-well-accepted experiment, she volunteered to sweep the laboratory
floor and sew on buttons for her professors during her student year. She later created, in 1876,
within MIT, the “Woman’s Laboratory” with the objective of developing a new branch of
chemistry, household chemistry, dealing mostly with food, cooking, digestion, bacteria, sanitation,
etc. Domestic science was thus to be considered as a new branch of scientific activities, the female
42
counterpart to industrial education.
This opened doors for women, as it had opened those of MIT to Ellen Richards, albeit in a restricted
way: when women begin to significantly elbow their ways into professions such as chemistry and
biology in the 1920s they often found themselves barred from teaching or working anywhere else
than home economics. “Woman science” is both an opening and “a barrier set up between women’s
work and the real world, a support to keep the male world male” (Shapiro, 2001)
Since change did not need revolutionary appliances, food was one of the first important areas
tackled by domestic scientists. School kitchens became cooking laboratories. Cooking had become
chemistry, had to respect scientific principles, with the now widely publicised notions of calories,
proteins and vitamins - these marvellous “accessory food factors". Feeding was the real goal, with
taste - a somehow unscientific and probably imported concept - just an incentive to eat properly. To
be nice-looking or even acceptable on a table, food had to be chopped, sliced, packed, canned. It
had to be an industrialised food.
Domestic scientists had faith in proteins. They admired the way fats and sugars pack a large amount
of calories into a small amount of food. They saw fruit and vegetables to be both financial and
nutritional luxuries. Raw food was a disorder, due to its undisciplined shape, and it should be sliced
into geometric pieces or better mashed. Even its colour had to be masked in a viscous white sauce magic white, everywhere - or enhanced through uniform artificial colouring. For these reasons,
social scientists welcomed any coming of industrial food, the generalisation of packaged brands and
the disappearance of bulk sales. Industry was an indispensable ally in promoting massive changes in
household kitchens, the necessary tool to implement domestic scientists’ views.
Most distinguished home economists begin to work in the food industry, appear in advertisements
and packages as products’ scientific cautions. To some extent, because they are eager to build a
career at a time this is so difficult for women, because they consider it necessary to spread their
views widely, and because they genuinely think that industry will respond to the best interests of
women, they make large concessions to industry. Their general position on the adulteration of food,
as publicised through various scandals, is to never consider it as an industrial problem, but rather an
educational one: learn to buy properly, and bad practices will stop. And the result is “a woman who
can discriminate between canned soups but does not ask too many questions about the ingredients”
(Shapiro, 2001).
Appliances also appear in domestic science theories: they are the indispensable tools to relieve
women of drudgery. Highly technical, they also push housewives towards engineering and
education. A female writer in the “New England Kitchen Magazine” wrote in the 1910s, “One feels
a peg higher in the scale of intelligence for using even a dishwashing machine.” As expounded by
Paulette Bernège: “Household management tasks constitute also a profession that is to be learnt and
practised. In housework, as in any work, we have to follow the major law that tends to have all
mechanical acts to be performed by machines, and thus insure to the woman’s brain a greater
capacity of spirit to govern and organise.” Rephrased into David Nye’s caustic terms, “appliances in
the home would literally force the housewife brain and nervous system to evolve to be the equal of
her husbands.”
So domestic scientists welcomed any new appliances, including those already available before
electricity: mechanical washing machines, iceboxes, floor sweepers, petrol-driven water pumps.
The arrival of electricity and the mass diffusion of electrical appliances gave them a wonderful
opportunity to fulfil their objectives of transforming household chores. So, when the electrical
43
industry, the utilities or the REA recruited home economists, they joined wholeheartedly. As in the
case of food, domestic scientists did not generally serve the objectives of rationality in a sense that
could lead them to be independent prescribers or to counterbalance industrial decisions.
Some however did: the Tennessee EHFA home economists attempted to develop community
refrigerators, for groups of ten to twelve farms, that were simpler and cheaper (US$ 650) than the
ones designed for the retail market. But the industry only understood the economies of scale from
its own side, not from the customers, and had little interest in developing collective solutions, and
the tentative is a failure. Social scientists had no voice in the industrial fight between electric and
gas refrigerators, when the latter could often have been a better solution. The most potent industrial
forces imposed their view - and the electric refrigerator. Home economists also ignored the feminist
option of considering alternative technological developments which tended - to use an early
socialist term - to “separate women from women’s work”, such as meal delivery services,
community restaurants and collective laundry centres (no matter if many of these developments
proved to fail at the time). Home economists needed industry to further their views, and would
support the industry’s decisions, even if these were designed to best serve the industry’s own
interests.
Overall, in the case of electrical appliances as in the case of food, American home economists were
largely successful, they widely succeeded in transforming households’ cooking and eating habits.
According to the remarkable Laura Shapiro, the turn of the 20th century was “the era that made
American cooking American, transforming a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for
instant mashed potatoes.” Home economists succeeded in making electrification a potent way to
transform daily family life, to bring multiple services to women, push urban and rural households in
a continuous process towards becoming a consumer society, by transforming home comforts and
women’s work. They heavily contributed to the successful changes they are had desired, receiving
the fruits of their collaboration. Their participation can be seen in the mass diffusion of methods and
products, by public opinion, by political forces and by the industry.
4.3
Industry needed women to sell its products
In the early 20th century, industry was growing but also learning. Henry Ford may have arrogantly
said that "you can have any colour as long as it is black,", but his competitors began to sell coloured
cars, more comfortable and luxurious than the Ford T. Some publicists may have pretended that
"Consumer demand is not something which already exists, but something that the producers and
distributors are able to create in the minds of the consuming public", but marketers soon discovered
that understanding consumers’ behaviours and motivations, to quote one advertising manager of the
time, would avoid “producing the wrong goods, distributing the right goods in the wrong way and
making the wrong advertising appeal.” American industry needed to understand its market, and
home economists brought a ready-made marketing base, on which to design products and build up
sales strategies.
Christine Fredericks, who referred to herself as the “spokesman for Mrs. Consumer”, pointed out, in
the late 1920s, in domestic science terms the importance of producers and distributors taking into
account the consumer’s point of view, while quite a number of industries were still to be convinced:
“We can go on, mechanistically, and multiply machinery and corporations and technical skill to
some end or other that does not seem clear, in a narrow search for profit; or we can advance along
the lines of our new vision of increased consumption and consumer welfare as the guiding
touchstone of our work, and realise what seems the new promise of great human advance.”
For industry, domestic science had an evident attraction as its views could be, and generally
44
explicitly, translated immediately into mass consumption goods, into business activities and profits.
The alliance with its domestic scientists made sense because women generally shared the home
economists views and had real decision power within their households, two points that would be
widely and successfully demonstrated by the domestic scientists. When domestic electricity became
a major business interest, domestic science was at the peak of its influence, plugging into Federal
State networks, with a recognised contribution to the World War I effort. In addition, according to
domestic scientists, women were definitely a large and potent market, deserving to be carefully
listened to by industry leaders.
According to Christine Fredericks, Mrs Average Consumer had a vocabulary of only about 1200
words (her stock of words may be small, but she has a rapid turnover), compared with a high school
graduate’s 13 000 words. Further, she had a "memory span" of only seven digits. Her education
amounted to roughly that of a sixth grade school and she knew no more, intellectually, than a 14year-old adolescent, if as much. She could not define the word "philanthropy" or even "courage".
The number of illiterate women in the US at the time - the late 1920s – was close to three million,
although 2.5 million other women were college graduates or had taken some college courses.
Despite this claim, Christine Fredericks had by no means a deprecatory image of the American
woman, and her “six criterions” description (see box below) presents a progressive and powerful
consumer, one with which business will have to deal:
The Six New Criterions of American Women:
(1) American women have arrived at a new kind of adulthood and no longer consider themselves the timid
"wards" and dependents of their fathers and husbands. They consider themselves individuals, citizens and
responsible persons, without trace of a sense of inferiority or fear of taboos. They are less negative and
passive, and more positive and aggressive toward life.
(2) American women have acquired a far greater degree of education and sophistication than formerly and
are much less like sheep. They boldly think about their "place in the sun" of American life and their
responsibilities, and initiate tendencies of their own befitting the feminine conception of "the good life."
(3) American women as a mass have made up their minds - partly in response to scientists, medical men,
experts and advertisers - that their practical dream is to abolish war, alcoholic drink, child-labor, infant
mortality, bad housing, malnutrition, lack of sanitation, disease, ugliness, and ignorance. They want to have a
great share in bringing about these abolitions.
(4) American women as a mass have made up their minds that they wish to be freer from the crushing, ageold burdens of the home, which have been crushing precisely because they have not been sufficiently
industrialised. They insist on more leisure and to this end have patronised the industrialisation of the tasks of
the home, which, practically speaking, means doing better and cheaper everything possible outside of the
home, in factories up to high scientific standards. They insist on the mechanisation of the remaining tasks of
the home, with the use of electricity and gas to keep pace with the rapid increase in the use of power per
worker in the factory.
(5) American women have to a degree reached genuine cultural sophistication, and they are resolved to have
more and more beauty in their surroundings; better homes, more artistic furnishings, more beautiful goods of
every variety, even more colorful and decorative kitchen utensils. They have become "style conscious" in
regard to everything they use and wear. Having the purchasing power to practice it, they are increasingly
applying the leverage of obsolescence to move ever upward on higher planes and standards of living, which
may thus keep pace with the rapid developments in science, invention and art.
(6) American women are resolved to enjoy more of the good things of life, more kinds of food, more leisure,
more athletics and sports, more education, more travel, more art, more entertainment, more music, more
civic improvement, better landscaping and city planning, more literature, more social graces, more social
freedom and more cosmopolitan polish and smartness. They are resolved to live more richly, remain more
youthful, appear to most advantage; to have fewer children but better cared for, better educated and better
fed.
Christine Fredericks (1929) Selling Mrs Consumer
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At roughly the same time, but in the very different context of the post-revolution years, Alexandra
Kollontai, in comparing the Great and Small Russia situations, showed the importance of the impact
of monetisation, and of its corollary the shift from large to nuclear families, on the decision power
of women within the household. When men entered the paid workforce and left home labour in
women’s hands, they also lost some crucial privileges. When large families dislocate, and leave
decisions in the hands of one couple, the family’s budget management lies largely in the woman’s
hands. Monetisation of the household economy largely means the transfer of power from men to
women.
Christine Fredericks is concurring when she shows the decisive influence of women in household
management in her typical mixture of respectful and teasing styles: “In general the American man,
however remarkable an industrial purchasing agent he may be, is not especially competent at
personal or family purchasing. It is he, not his wife, who patronises the fake oil stock salesman,
who falls for the sets of books he will never read, who gambles in Wall Street and loses like other
lambs, and who buys cat-and-dog stocks and various other useless appendages which sap the family
patrimony (...). These men secretly realise what the situation is and permit their wives, with their
more conservative point of view, to take the family financial reins out of their hands.”
In the 1920s, Dr H L Hollingworth of Columbia University conducted research that ironically
concluded that the only item that American men bought entirely by themselves, without
consultation with women, was their own collars. The purchase of not another article of apparel was
free from the cooperative purchasing influence of women; and when men moved to wearing shirts
with attached collars even this little island of independence was removed.
More seriously, Christine Fredericks quoted two surveys conducted in New York that showed the
importance of women’s decision-making in matters of domestic purchases: the first one showed that
if men seem to have the preponderant voice in buying cars, musical instruments, newspapers and
pets, the decision was mainly left to women in the case not only of regular expenses (food and
goods such as clothes and drugstore articles) but also of home equipment such as furniture (half is
bought by women alone and half based on joint husband and wife decisions) and appliances. The
second survey showed that out of the twelve retail purchase classifications, in only two were men
prominent in purchasing, and the majority was not that great: hardware (51% versus 49%) and
automobiles (59% versus 41%). Electrical goods purchases, for instance, were based on women’s
decisions in 80% of cases.
In her comments, the author was prudent enough to add: “Woman is of course powerful in buying
largely because of her secondary position to man. She is not man's equal in earning and doing and
building, therefore she gravitates toward the position of quartermaster rather than general in their
mutual organisation. She takes charge of supplies largely for the very reason that she can't lead the
forces in the field. But then we have Napoleon's word for it that "armies move on their stomachs,"
and it is, alas, even more true that families move on their market baskets!” Moreover, industry
moved a great deal on the household baskets. Fredericks estimates that women were spending
around US$ 52 billion a year, US$ 1 billion a week or “US$ 6000 per second”. More than half of
men’s payrolls were in the hands of women. A message that industry and commerce were quick to
understand.
Self-interest was not the only motive that convinced industry; domestic science ideas met intimate
convictions among the reform movement and business leaders, as a progressive - and inoffensive reflection on future social and economic development. For many, these ideas constituted a vision of
progress, the ideological basis on which to develop actions, services and products. In an article for
46
“Good Housekeeping Magazine”, Thomas Edison declares in 1913: the “woman of the future” (the
article’s title) is to become “rather a domestic engineer than a domestic laborer, with the greatest of
all handmaidens, electricity, at her service”. A text that reflects both the desire to please his
audience and a comprehension of the fundamentals of home commodity markets. As David Nye
expresses it, “electrical interests recognise the indispensable role of the home economics movement
to their success. The electrified home is the vision of women reformers before than the product of
corporate imagination.”
Thomas Edison, and behind him private industry, found in home economics a ready theory on
which to found the development of domestic electricity and appliances. Morris Cooke, the REA and
the electrification cooperative movement were greatly influenced by domestic science, and put its
principles into practice. They clearly saw its potential in the development of the power sector, its
consequences in terms of achievements and, as far as the companies were concerned, profit.
The domestic scientist’s “inexhaustible study of the subject” (Shapiro, 2001) constituted for
appliance factories the best platform on which to understand housewives’ interests and introduce
household commodities: produce the “right” goods, distribute them in the “right” way and with the
“right” advertising appeal. Female home economists also constituted a well-educated taskforce,
with the “right” ideas and the “right” training, eager to enter the labour market and establish careers.
There use as marketing and publicity specialists, as well as a field sales force, is for American
appliance companies, utilities and the electrification cooperative movement, a logical and even
imperative choice.
Domestic science disciples in Europe were too weak, and came too late, to dominate domestic
changes. During the interwar period, women explored some new domestic ways of life through the
development of electricity, and the electricity and appliance industry began to get interested in
French female society, but their meeting will only become significant after World War II (Henri
Morsel, 2000). Although European electrification was largely complete, little had been done to
transform the home, apart from providing light, or bring services to women.
Domestic science is now relegated to obscurity, and the names of Ellen Richards, Christine
Fredericks and the French Paulette Bernège are largely forgotten, and for some good reasons.
Unlike most of the opposing views, capitalism is not fond of ideologies. Ideologies formalise then
congeal ideas, and companies need permanent flexibility to adapt developments to their best
interests through scientific innovation and market changes. Home economists acted on
consumption, a concept instinctively - and wrongly - perceived as the passive driver of production,
which leads historians to usually describe the roots of the consumer society by quoting Taylor and
Ford, both producers and men. And while feminists did not oppose domestic scientists at the time,
today’s female observers easily denounce their “incapacity to separate woman from woman’s work”
(Shapiro, 2001), their insistence on keeping women in the domestic sphere.
Built on the philosophy of separating the domestic and public spheres, the domestic science
movement eventually demonstrated that these spheres are in no way separate. As today’s feminists
point out, there is no difference in nature between women’s so-called reproductive activities and
productive work “Women produce clean toilets and nutritious food, but the most important thing
that housework produces is people able to go out everyday into the market place and work. They are
fed, they are rested, they are clothed; these workers are produced by housework. Like other
economic activities, households take raw material and send something out” (Laura Caroll, 1999).
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The history, and the very success, of domestic science is based on a “holy alliance” between women
and industry. The domestic science movement developed the ideological base and provided the foot
soldiers in the mass development of electricity and gas, industrial food and home appliances. If
some of the founders of domestic science dreamt of making the whole world homelike, the home
economists’ mission was to “make the whole world businesslike, and the place to begin is home”
(Shapiro, 2001). Further, this very success could be another reason to forget domestic scientists:
their views are now so intrinsically and practically related with our daily life that we are mostly
unable to identify them as a theory. Like it or not, domestic science moulds our societies, long after
it was passed over as an active ideology.
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5
The three conditions for successful electrification
5.1
Trust people
5.1.1
Electrification Planning is an historical nonsense
Nowadays electrical engineers, who have generally grown up during an era of planned
electrification and been trained in large utilities, have no memory of the history of rural
electrification in their own country and the industrial world in general. To a large extent, they
substitute a new fiction, one that is far more rational and somehow more comforting than the real
one. This false story is to become the future history of the power sector in developing countries.
Electrification will result from reasonable public support, adequate central planning, and sensible
entrepreneurial development of large and usually public utilities. Grids will extend from the cities to
rural areas until they cover all parts of the territory and deliver the service to all. If the results prove
to be a disappointment, it will be because of weak market reactivity, lack of investment and external
constraints.
This scenario is very different from the ones developed during the first steps of electrification in
industrial countries. Public authorities did not plan rural electrification, brought little or no financial
support and mainly based their policies on a “laissez-faire" approach, leaving initiatives to local
communities and the private sector. This led to the development of hundreds or thousands of small
and diverse systems, all decentralised and sometimes anarchic, yet quite effective. In a second
phase, in order to complete an increasingly difficult and costly rural electrification, countries and
states established financial support schemes, but still largely left decisions and the development of
rural electrification in the hands of the communities affected.
Rural electrification development did not ride on the back of a growth in consumer income, but
rather had to face, decade after decade, the progressive impoverishment of the rural population. In
most Western countries, rural electrification developed at a time when farmers' incomes were
steadily falling. Thus, the development of electrification in industrialised countries was not made
possible by a progressive increase in rural purchasing power, but rather by comprehensive supply
and marketing strategies in which the State organised, but where non-governmental and local
initiatives played the major role. Local communities, cooperatives and small enterprises all played
leading roles in the development of rural electrification, building up systems of their own, for
themselves: thousands of small utilities appeared. No electrification of rural areas was achieved
before World War II by large public or private companies. History shows, to adopt the old slogan,
that “small is beautiful”, and that, beyond large utilities’ efforts to develop existing grids, a lot can
be achieved through local independent electrification, made up of a multiplicity of small schemes.
Small local grids did, over time, integrate into regional then nationally interconnected systems,
which finally led in some cases to the creation of large public utilities, often around the era of
decolonisation. As a consequence, many newly independent countries took for granted that a large
public utility was the scheme best suited to protecting public interests and advancing their incipient
electrification. Only a few succeeded, generally the smaller countries with a strong political will
(Ireland, Costa Rica, Tunisia). The few larger countries that were the exception and chose
decentralised electrification as the basis for constructing their interconnected grid (such as China)
were probably right. Some analysts have claimed that the new wave of privatisation of existing
utilities in the 1990s would offer a better opportunity to develop rural electrification, and few will
be satisfied since private dynamics plays against the extension of existing grids. Liberalisation of
49
the power sector makes sense only if it promotes local initiatives - if it leaves electrification in the
hands of those who have no electricity.
That references to women are found in documents about electrification in the developing world is
no more than the expression of a cautious courtesy. No more women than the national norms - and
often less - are to be found in public departments or companies dealing with electrification. The
power sector could be yet another sector where the “neglect of women’s role is simply a corollary
of the general lack of a socially informed design and implementation strategy” (Michael Cernea,
1985). But history has moved on: it gives concrete and practical evidence that women have a major
role to play in making electrification quicker and more cost-effective and increasing its impact on
populations.
5.1.2
Support local initiatives
There is no unique way to carry out electrification. Electrification was successfully developed in
many European countries through local communities building and operating power systems. In
other countries, such as France, electrification first relied solely on private dynamics, attracting a
fair number of small and medium firms by setting up a secure regulation environment (municipal
concessions) which provided electricity to half of the villages and one-third of rural dwellers. This
was followed by a policy of further public subsidy that completed electrification through municipal
investment and private operation. NGOs, who could have applied to the scheme, instead tended to
adopt only a marginal role. In the US, where neither a dominant private industry nor municipal
utilities played a significant role in rural electrification, NGOs did achieve this with the support of a
comprehensive Federal State support scheme.
All these approaches have one thing in common: they rely on a diversity of initiatives, with multiple
utilities that coexist, compete, grow and finally weave into national grids. In western history, there
is no significant example of a one-company development spreading lines from cities to rural areas
until electrification was complete. Moreover, major public and private urban companies played only
a minor role in rural electrification when compared with small businesses, local municipal firms and
cooperatives. Reducing the power sector to one major company and establishing monopolies, as has
been promoted in many developing countries egged on by their clever advisers, leads not so much
to electrification as a prohibition on electrification.
In both Europe as well as America, the rural electrification process became efficient when a very
simple condition was met: when people without electricity were put in a position to decide on their
own electrification. State and Parliament representatives in Europe since the beginning of the 20th
century, and in America some 30 years later, have had the intelligence and sense to trust rural
bodies and populations: rural populations that could read, but not much more; and rural
municipalities and equivalent bodies with only small budgets to manage and limited technical skills.
Many North European authorities took the opportunity to promote municipal enterprises. French
authorities gave rights to even the smallest municipality such as over granting long-term
concessions and technical control over private utilities, and letting small enterprises build on and
operate the systems, according to the general wishes of local communities. American authorities
based their rural electrification policy on farmers’ cooperatives, even where these were known to
have little management capacity. The Irish Rural Electrification Office based its later electrification
policy on parish committees, enabling decentralised decision-making over electrification.
All these governments were putting their trust in the people. However, they set up safeguards where
they could - for they were not utopians – they designed proper schemes, gave technical and
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managerial assistance and imposed fairly strict control over local bodies and firms. Nevertheless, at
the end of the day, they left the initiative to the very people who did not have electricity, because
they thought that the need, or rather the desire, for electricity was a sufficiently potent motive to
overcome all the weaknesses and difficulties.
Authorities do not need to become involved with decentralised decisions: they do not need to think
about whether electrification is a more urgent need than roads or water because the decision is left
to the community itself. The community can be offered facilities to undertake electrification, or
water projects, and then decide for themselves according to their own local priorities. Authorities do
not need to pretend to plan rural electrification: there is no need, no logic required to decide who is
next to have electricity. Every community may decide, in its own time, on its own initiative,
according to its own design, to undertake an electrification project. Moreover, all are welcome, as
long as they play the game and respect the rules. The electrification policy should consist of
defining these rules and making financial resources available to fund projects. These rules should be
simple and systematic, to ensure that communities can make up their own minds and decide.
If community leaders want to undertake such a project, they should know what grants and loans are
available, and build their project to meet the necessary terms. French municipalities and US
cooperatives had a set of standard documents such as model decision reports and letters to
authorities that helped them follow the procedures. They were in charge of technical and
management control, but had access to public technical and management support if they wanted
this. All the electrification policy was built to meet their needs - to support them. In both cases, the
State had a voluntary but active policy, played a decisive role in the electrification process and in
the mobilisation of decentralised initiatives but, finally, let local communities decide to create
thousands of utilities.
The route to full electrification in Europe and America is very different to the one adopted after
independence in developing countries, many of which relied on public utility monopolies. It is also
a very different approach to the one now adopted for rural electrification. Even if liberalisation is
now the panacea, even if - in theory - new regulations open up the power sector to all kinds of
initiatives, the move towards decentralisation remains slow, and often nonexistent.
Central authorities still see it as their responsibility to plan electrification and decide on the
allocation of project resources. With the support of donors, they divide national territory into
regional concessions and intend to reproduce, albeit on a smaller scale, the earlier monopoly
systems. They set up sufficiently complicated rules – such as for competing tenders between
projects - to discourage local community initiatives, favour certain large companies and keep
control of projects. Only a few marginal schemes have been designed to give authority and financial
support to communities or local NGO initiatives.
Evidence shows that those who have electricity (and, more often than not, air conditioning systems)
are not the ones to decide on the electrification of others. Decentralised decision-making and trust in
local initiatives should be the basis of new electrification policies. Such an approach will save the
financial resources of public budgets, and shorten the time that rural dwellers have to wait for
electricity.
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5.2
Target the poor, but make them pay
Electrification means investment, and needs high prices and high revenues to attract investors (at
least from the private sector) and to enable existing companies to generate enough cash to go on
investing. Whatever the institutional choices may have been, the development of the power sector
has always been quicker and more efficient where and when tariffs where highest. High tariffs are
said to have favoured the earlier development of electrification in Britain and Germany compared to
France. Tariffs were never a major issue for European public authorities until electrification was
almost completed, and conflicts between firms on the one hand and local bodies and users about
price rises only occurred in the 1930s. When conditions were set by the American REA on tariffs, it
was a minimum not a maximum stipulated, to ensure that cooperatives would be able to meet their
reimbursement obligations.
In asking for minimum tariffs, the American Federal government knew that there would be enough
pressure to keep them low. This pressure would come from reasonable commercial considerations:
if electricity is too expensive, people will not connect or use too little electricity; and also from the
cooperative users and leaders as well as from local politicians. This can create major difficulties
when a utility is both public and small: municipal companies and user associations frequently
experienced difficulties in proceeding to new investments - and in more than one case in properly
managing their existing assets – in no small part due to the fact that their own philosophy as well as
subscriber pressure led them to concede low tariffs to their existing clients.
This is frequently also a major problem for large companies when they are both public and located
in developing countries: they face strong external pressure to invest and to set low tariffs. In the
period when international funding availability was at its peak (the easy money of the 1970s and the
early 1980s), with strong and often incautious support from international organisations (led by the
World Bank and other Development Banks), a large number of public companies in developing
countries got themselves engaged in a low-rate low-tariff cycle that is largely responsible for their
lack of capitalisation today. Donors push loans for huge investments, and governments press for
low tariffs, either in order to protect the interests of large customers (right-wing sympathies) or
please their urban middle class supporters (left-wing leaning). This all made public utilities easy
prey for the 1990s’ privatisation movement.
When advocating low-tariff rural electrification, top energy-sector executives in developing
countries may well misjudge, by ignorance or demagogy, the high level of capitalisation required in
the process of electrification. While it is necessary to take advantage of all the possible solidarity
mechanisms (such as public subsidies and cross-subsidies from urban customers), it is also
necessary to take advantage, as far as possible, of the willingness-to-pay of new rural users in order
to have electrification progress as far and as rapidly as possible: target the poor, but have them pay.
Nobody likes high prices but most willingness-to-pay studies in non-electrified communities in
developing countries have shown that most have the capacity, and would be willing, to pay far more
than the national state-controlled tariffs. The few existing informal (and illegal) electrification
schemes in countries where monopolistic utilities rule show that rural dwellers will pay a lot for the
precious electric service, up to US$ 5 per bulb per month. There is a clear gap between what rural
dwellers could pay and existing tariffs, a gap that offers opportunities for cost-effective
electrification
The REA electrification, based on soft loans, appears to have been cost-effective, more so than the
European version based on subvention. Some reasons may be advanced for this: first, its promoters
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proved that the private sector is not necessarily the most efficient when it comes to costs – and the
REA obtained significant cuts in line and other costs. A lesson that might apply to many utilities in
developing countries, especially those that have traditionally relied on institutional loans and in
particular bilateral loans, and have had to purchase equipment under conditions of limited
competition between providers. A detailed analysis of equipment costs may well show that, in some
countries, the price paid for a kilometre of line or a KW of installed generating capacity has been
above the international market price.
Secondly, the REA policy was successfully built on the following premise: farmers have limited
monetary resources but, if you do not exhaust these in high upfront expenses (one of the principles
of cooperative electrification was that only a moderate fee was required to be part of the scheme)
and if you provide facilities for them to buy domestic appliances and farm equipment, farmers will
purchase equipment at a reasonable rate and use enough energy to make electrification globally
cost-effective. Cooperatives set low access fees, provided credit schemes for home appliances and
worked hard to encourage members to buy and use electrical equipment, and hence spend on
electricity. This approach works: low-cost access to electrification leaves the purchasing capacity of
new subscribers intact, who then quickly invest in electrical appliances with the help of instalment
schemes. The Irish REO adopted the same approach: electricity was expensive (nearly 20 cents per
kWh in today’s prices), but connection fees low - about the equivalent of 100 KWh of consumption,
the consumption of just a few months.
The condition the 1930s’ American private companies set to develop into rural areas was that
farmers should make a major financial contribution to the investment, exactly the way that major
utilities nowadays act in developing countries. This was a very efficient way to establish financial
barriers and so avoid a rapid increase in the number of not very cost-effective rural clients. As
electrification generally requires a significant financial contribution from new subscribers, either
rural dwellers cannot pay - which is sadly the case for many - or they pay and use up a large amount
of their cash savings or become indebted, which considerably reduces their domestic investment
capacity in the following years.
The view presented in the 1930s by American private utility executives is exactly the same as the
one generally agreed for rural electrification in developing countries today: farmers are poor; they
cannot pay for connections and equip themselves sufficiently to be decent customers. In other
words, there is no rural market for electricity and electrical appliances. Let us assume that the old
American and the present-day third-world utilities, both with clever staff and direct commercial
interfaces with their rural populations, were and are best placed to judge. The fact is that they both
have good, and somehow similar, reasons to come to this same pessimistic conclusion.
The attitude of the American sector is simple, or at least the easiest to explain. Little or no market
was the best response to political pressure to extend their lines into rural areas, given that there are
so many more-profitable activities to develop at the time.
The attitude of the utilities in developing countries is also quite understandable. First, they generally
have a limited investment capacity, often based on sporadic access to public funding, many
demands from the needs of the existing infrastructure in terms of maintenance and replacement, as
well as pressure from their clients to improve service quality. They are thus in a defensive position,
that gives little entrepreneurial space for developing into rural areas. Second, they have to apply
such low tariffs that any new rural client becomes a financial burden. This drives them to the one
approach that negates their obligation to provide a service, namely demanding a high participation
fee from users who are made to pay the full costs of the line (over €1000 per 100 metres). There is
53
no market for new users, because the tariffs make it a non-cost-effective market, and there is no
market for electricity because with the high initial costs people see it as non-essential and because
there is no scheme to help or promote user-consumption. The power sector organisation effectively
kills the market.
High tariffs and low access fees appear to be two major preconditions for the successful
development of rural electrification. If the first appears unpopular or unacceptable to the developing
country rural customer, it must be remembered that both are linked. The low tariff and high access
cost approach, the de-facto mainstream electrification process used until now, has proved its
effectiveness in restricting rural electrification, a crucial condition for large public utilities to
survive. In these times of liberalisation and decentralisation, power sector policies should impose,
as crucial rules, maximum access fees (equivalent to no more than a few months of consumption)
and minimum tariffs (to protect small utilities from themselves and from external pressure).
5.3
Respond to women’s needs
5.3.1
An economic electrification
Much has been written about the reasons for the slow development of rural electrification in
America, at the very time the opportunity for public involvement was discussed (the 1930s) and
long after in the writings about the success of the American cooperative electrification movement.
Was this tardiness due to exceptionally large rural areas and market dispersion? Other countries
faired better in similar circumstances. Among countries outside of Europe, one should mention New
Zealand, where the government instituted a widespread electrification plan in 1918, dividing the
country into 55 electric power districts. In 1935, 40 districts were already electrified, 39 of which
were predominantly rural, and two-thirds of rural dwellers had access to the service. Was the slow
pace in America due to an overemphasis on the private sector? However, public schemes were not
prohibited, and quite a number of municipal initiatives were established in the early stages of the
US electrification. Further, other countries, like France, chose to rely on private initiatives and
achieved better results in rural areas, even before beginning with a subsidy policy.
The main reason for the slow progress in the US is the relatively earlier and more massive
development of major companies that dominated the sector. These companies had other interests
and other challenges than rural electrification. American private industry’s attitude to rural
electrification was perfectly illusional, built upon a succession of smoke curtains. The creation in
the early 1930s of the Committee on the Relation of Electricity and Agriculture appeared to
represent a strategy, but it was a body whose investigations and training activities did not actually
achieve anything, and which built up a lobbying network, against public intervention, among
trainees across the country. Private sector’s repeated claims about the lack of commercial
opportunities in rural electrification - too poor farmers, too expensive electrification – were quickly
shown to be untrue by the REA successes, nor were they in any case convincing, and neither were
private utilities’ last minute and largely fancy proposals to take over the initial REA funds. All
distractions to wrap up a simple fact, that they had other strategies, and other targets for their
investment capital.
These strategies reveal the very nature of the American electrification and power sector
development, and its fundamental difference to the European one. In electrical terms, one could say
they were looking not for power, but for load; in marketing terms, not for new customers, but for
new consumption. This was to be achieved by selling not only electricity, but also domestic
equipment; that is selling equipment that will sell electricity. A far more profitable form of
54
electrification for utilities, a source of income for the electrical commodity industry, and a range of
electrical services offered to households and especially women. A win-win strategy in which rural
dwellers had but a small part to play.
A particular merit of the REA was to see the above approach, seen by private industry as being for
its existing clients, as equally valid for the rural population and setting out to prove it. The REA’s
financial hypothesis was built on the belief that rural households would invest in their own houses,
contribute to the development of a mass market for electric appliances and, by doing so, secure
profitable conditions for electrification and power service delivery. Whatever private business may
have said, the REA proved that there was a rural market. Farmers invested in their houses,
massively bought appliances and, in doing so, made rural electrification possible and far more costeffective than it had been in Europe.
A detailed comparison between public money spent on rural electrification in European countries
and the USA has yet to be made, but the first European developments tended to focus on subsidies,
while the USA favoured soft loans, passing on most of the cost to customers. Moreover, the
customers were willing to pay, not because they were wealthier than their European counterparts,
but because they were being offered something far more valuable. A kilometre of line probably
costs about the same price wherever, but its value was far greater to US households: it meant access
not only to light, but also to many electric services, most of which benefited women.
When the REA, following the private sector’s example, called for greater female participation, in its
own staff, on cooperative boards, at member meetings, it was not primarily for some ethical gender
equality preoccupation, but for simple efficiency. For the cooperative movement, as for the
American private sector, electrification did not end when the farm was connected, which has been
the historic vision of electrification in France and remains the dominant one in developing
countries. Connection is just the beginning of the story, a story where nobody can afford to ignore
women because women are the first to benefit, and the main decision-makers when it comes to
purchasing.
While the newly-born power sector was fully engaged in the electrification process all over the
industrialised world, its “engine” was thus quite different from one country to another. In France,
the engine was the development and organisation of the distribution market; in Germany and
Switzerland, to sell electrical equipment; and in the USA, to sell mass appliances. Electricity in
Europe inhabits a man’s world; in the USA, a woman’s world.
In most developing countries, the only objective of rural electrification is to provide access to
anybody and everybody, to the last farm in the last village, to take the anthem of one Latin
American national agency for electrification. The measurement of electrification is frequently the
number of newly-electrified villages (even if few families have access within the village), at best
the number of new customers. Public interest and public involvement stops when the household is
electrified, and it then becomes a private affair between the customer and the appliance business.
This is more or less the historic approach adopted in Europe, one that led to an early but expensive
and basic electrification. In developing countries, electrification is definitely such a man’s world.
55
5.3.2
Not a world of difference
In America, the 1920s saw a major surge in the Klu Klux Klan after its rebirth in 1915, with a peak
in popular participation (several hundred thousand enrolled), political power and countrywide
violence of the “invisible empire”. However, these times also saw the discovery of “Negro
purchasing power”, formalised in marketing literature in the early 1930s in such as Paul Kenneth
Edwards’ “The southern urban Negro as a consumer”. This book presents a picture of black
households’ purchasing power as being quite impressive for the time, and argues for the need for
advertisements that specifically target a black audience. These should picture “the Negro as he
really is, not caricatured, degraded, or made fun of; that here the Negro [has to be] dignified and
made to look as he is striving to look, and not as he looked in ante-bellum days; that here [is] the
new Negro”. However, as a sign of the times, one should note that an example of appropriate
publicity given by Edwards’ book is for skin whitening cream.
The 1920s also saw the development of marketing studies that both gave relevant information about
purchasing and equipment patterns and testified to the growing interest in women’s purchasing
power. The most emblematic is perhaps the 1929 book “Mrs Consumers” by Christine Fredericks,
who estimated that women were spending around US$ 52 billion a year, more than half the US$ 92
million household income, and showed that women had significant control over decisions regarding
expenditure, even if this usually came from a male pay-packet. American industry could not have
developed its products without learning, understanding and taking into account women’s
behaviours and motivations. Firms would not have sold their products without appropriate
marketing and communications targeted at women.
Fredericks’ “Selling Mrs Consumer” and Edwards’ “The southern urban Negro as a consumer”, in
focusing on purchasing power, can definitely claim to have given respect to women and black
populations, just as will occur later for homosexuals (“the pink pound”). Fighting against racism or
gender discrimination is supposed to respond to more noble motives: social and cultural changes,
rather than simple commercial recognition, are required to mitigate fear of others and get rid of
discrimination. However, it must be admitted that pragmatic mercantile reasons somehow build up
pressure for political change in the struggle against social prejudices.
However, in developing countries there is a lack of such commercial drivers for change, the absence
of a marketing culture tends instead to reinforce existing misunderstandings and prejudices. Take
the case of black Africa: the analysis of African consumer attitudes is still very rudimentary,
sustained neither by the universities (modern consumption being largely absent from the
preoccupations of African sociologists) nor by the public sector and its international counterparts
(for which the only pertinent social approach, if any, is in terms of poverty) nor by the private
sector that judges marketing studies to be of little interest. African markets are considered as
peripheral, or even as a dumping ground for the developed world’s outdated products.
The questions regarding the very existence of a rural market are based not so much on facts as upon
attitudes. National and international decision-makers and even the local populations in developing
countries are not best placed to assess the market because their references to the differences in
development between Northern and Southern countries are mostly measured by the differences
between the Northern better-off and the Southern poor: between Northern upper- and middle-class
cities and Southern slums and rural areas. Further, the dominant urban classes in developing
countries tend to share the same paternalist view of rural dwellers as do international organisations’
programme managers of their whole country. In other words, these people are poor and there is not
much more to say about it.
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However, there usually is: a closer look shows that rural populations do own and buy, even in a
very negative environment with little access to goods and a high cost of money. Many rural
dwellers have sufficient income to pretend to a far better life, if only they were offered more
products and services. New access to the electric grid invariably provokes a generally slow but
steady trend in acquiring domestic equipment. Is there really such a difference between 1920s’
American rural customers, or even 1960s’ rural European customers, and today’s developing
country rural customers?
Averages are probably not the best way to analyse market trends and opportunities but some ideas
can be drawn from the following figures. Any developing country farmer sent back to the America
of the 1930s or even the 1920s would in fact see quite a difference to his own environment today. In
1920, one-third of American farmers had a car, in 1930 two-thirds. Rural dwellers in the 1920s, due
to the bulging prosperity brought to the American countryside by World War I, had several pieces
of equipment, and even more in the 1930s despite farmers’ net incomes being virtually halved.
Equipment rates (see box below) were far ahead of any rural area in developing countries today.
Average net
annual income in
the 1930s
US$ 700 per farm,
( US$ 300 to US$
900 depending on
year)
Electrical items
Iron
Radio
Washing
machine
Refrigerator
Average price 1936
US$ 4
US$ 40 (table model) and US$ 80 (console)
US$ 66 (from US$ 40 to US$ 500)
US$ 164 (between US$ 75 and US$ 600)
REA farm
ownership
1939
84%
82%
59%
32%
Source: REA, quoted by Ronald Kline(2000)
It is also interesting to compare farmers’ incomes and appliance prices in the 1930's USA and in
today’s rural areas in developing countries (conveniently ignoring that the US$ has a different value
in one period than another, which we would have to take into account in a strict economic analysis).
An average 1930s’ farm generated US$ 700 in annual net income: a figure not that dissimilar to
present figures in quite a number of rural areas of the third world. A farmer’s gross income
amounted to between US$ 2 and US$ 3 per person per day, not dissimilar to the present UN poverty
level. Appliances were sometimes cheaper than the ones to be found today (where could one find
such a thing as a US$ 40 washing machine?), sometimes equal (you can find a basic refrigerator for
US$ 150 in developing countries), sometimes more expensive (present transistor radios being far
cheaper). So while there may be differences, the two situations are not a world or an era apart.
5.3.3
Promoting consumption
Despite the little consideration it receives in the history of politics and philosophy, domestic science
is probably one of the major ideologies in moulding western and other modern societies, including
in the developing world. Born in the USA during the last two decades of the 19th century, it timidly
spread into Europe by the 1920s and imposed itself after World War II. It is a necessary and almost
hidden social side of capitalism, the indispensable companion of agricultural changes and industrial
development. It departs from evidence that, as much as evidence is easily forgotten, it is impossible
to develop production without developing consumption.
In the first stages of independence, increasing national production is considered the fundament on
57
which to build development, while consumption appears to be dangerously associated with former
colonial practices: industrialised countries taking advantage of the weakness of developing
countries to spread their products, with no interest in local production, and deepening external
balance deficits. However, the exaggerated emphasis on production produces a number of “white
elephants” that go bankrupt for lack of a market. While weak consumption impedes imports, it also
discourages foreign and local investment in production.
Support for the development of poorer countries, as it may be deduced from forty years of grey
literature from international and bilateral aid agencies, also appears to have been mainly built on the
disconnection - or even contradiction - between views on production and consumption. While
production is an undisputed magic word, consumption is somehow a fiendish one. Agricultural
development is often synonymous with the preservation of the small agricultural producer, food
policy with defending rural self-consumption, human resource management with fighting against
rural migration, development of production with exports. While the development of production is a
major rallying call, developing consumption carries negative overtones, or is at best considered as a
private responsibility where public support has no part to play.
It is unrealistic to look at how to both increase people’s incomes and reduce their expenses, simply
because incomes and expenditures are of the same nature (unless you think of an economy
exclusively built on exports to rich countries). Rich countries’ economies are rich not because
people save most of what they earn, but because they spend, and often spend a lot more than what
they earn. US households, and now increasingly European ones, are becoming heavily indebted in
order to keep the capitalistic machine in overdrive. Poor countries cannot become richer without
indulging - and even pushing - their populations to enter further into the monetarised economy, to
spend all they can and perhaps even more. This is the price that has to be paid to ensure that
purchased goods and services finally reach the poor, as well as generate sufficient public resources
to offer quality social services to all.
The “third world rural household as a consumer” - or even the urban one in a number of countries is still waiting to be discovered, to be understood, and finally respected. In 2001, there were four
billion people living on US$ 5 or less per day, of which 2.7 billion were surviving on less than US$
2 per day. This is no doubt an expression of poverty, but it also represents an impressive market of
more than ten billion dollars per day. “The idea that poor do not have money is false ... the base of
the pyramid of income offers gigantic opportunities” (Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad, 2004).
Earning money from this market does not have to mean exploitation: one can deliver products and
services valued by this public, at reasonable prices and with sales conditions adapted to their
circumstances.
Ample proof of this can be found, in particular in the telecommunications sector. In Bangladesh, the
Grameen Bank, an emblematic and undisputed micro-credit organisation, lends money to women in
order to set up small phone boutiques, where rural or slum clients pay for calls: the business is costeffective and the average amount spent by clients on communications is US$ 90 per month. The
British private firm Vodaphone is now installing 5000 similar “phone kiosks” in South Africa,
managed by independent small entrepreneurs. While some countries – such as China - have long
developed low-cost products for export to poor consumers all over the world, western international
firms are now targeting such “poor” markets: Procter and Gamble for nutritious drinks in Pakistan
and Morocco, Unilever for sweets and Hewlett Packard with solar digital photography rural
businesses in India. Cemex, one of the world’s major cement firms, is becoming involved in lowcost building in Mexico.
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New “pro-poor” market policies, formalised by some international agencies, take into account the
existence of a cost-effective market in the poorest segments of the population. However, in general,
when applied to real programmes, these policies tend to sell international cooperation’s typical
alternative products, such as intermediate technology or environmentally friendly services. Analysis
may lead to some niche markets for these products and services, but also to the wider conclusion
that poor households want conventional commodities and services, produced by existing and
regular worldwide industries, and that they are waiting for pro-poor policies to address these
desires. Telephony is one of the few examples where the real and massive expectations of poor
households are actually being met. Telephone kiosks, with telephone cards sold at city crossroads,
perhaps reflect the dynamism of the telecommunication sector compared to the energy sector.
The power sector’s problems are mostly the same as those faced a century ago by public decisionmakers and industry: the same complaints about too low load factors, the same problems of
consumption being too small to make systems cost-effective, and the same difficulties in addressing
a poor rural electrification market. When dealing with problematic load profiles, utilities and public
authorities generally focus on trying to reduce the peaks through comprehensive energy
conservation programmes. In the domestic sector they promote the use of low-consumption devices
that are used in peak hours (high efficiency bulbs, for instance), which indeed is part of the solution.
However, they hardly ever consider the development of off-peak demand. When efforts are made to
fill the off-peak hours in rural areas (as in some programmes in Indonesia or now Senegal), these
focus mainly on productive and community social facilities, and this is certainly a first positive step.
Low domestic consumption in rural areas is considered, however, as an inevitability, not a
parameter to address.
Irons, fans, washing machines, refrigerators, individual water pumps and certain other electrical
appliances are all apt to increase off-peak energy consumption, and their further use would enhance
the financial conditions of a utility and the cost effectiveness of rural electrification. However, these
domestic items are considered beyond the public scope, and their spreading is the sole responsibility
of the market, of private industry. A contradictory conclusion for those who consider that there is
no or very little market for “bare” rural electrification i.e. for lighting and little more. For
appliances, as for electricity, there is certainly a market, but this market cannot be addressed by
private initiatives alone, it needs comprehensive strategies with public support, as in the early
decades of US rural electrification.
The REA’s experience shows that, in the more difficult rural electrification market, customers,
utilities and the appliance industry cannot to do it alone, and that it is necessary to build up a
comprehensive public policy. This policy involves investing public money in loans, not only to
build up grids, but to encourage people to spend on appliances and energy though public-supported
credit and marketing. In a number of developing countries, the appliance industry is either nonexistent (often the case in the smallest and poorest countries) or little prepared or disinclined to
enter the rural market. Access to money is extremely expensive for the rural and peri-urban poor:
few commodity industries have their own instalment plans that are available for the poor, and
commercial banks may impose annual interest rates of up to 1000%. Micro-credit institutions,
which do successfully reach the rural and peri-urban poor, often have high rates of up to 50% a
year, have little liquidity and no public support to go beyond “productive” loans.
A focus on domestic equipment, with utilities, the appliance industry and micro-credit banks
working together to design and disseminate lower cost products, and providing publicly-funded
comprehensive instalment and advertising programmes through existing local networks may be a
smarter way to consolidate rural electrification and make it more economic for public budgets.
59
Moreover, domestic appliance market development contributes to economic and social
development, for utilities, for manufacturers and distributors and, last but not least, for users. Two
good reasons for public support.
Domestic electricity has a somewhat ambivalent image, because it brings dubious benefits such as
leisure and entertainment. “If we promote rural electrification, it is not in our view to encourage
people to buy televisions and watch soap operas. We do it because we think that electrification
brings social and economic benefits to rural populations.” claimed a top French executive during a
recent Johannesburg conference preparation meeting in Paris, an opinion largely shared by the
development specialists in most aid organisations, whose priority is invariably electrifying
productive and social facilities.
That millions of rural households buy battery-powered televisions before the arrival of the grid may
be a sign of development, but it is often seen as the wrong type of development. Domestic electrical
appliances can also be considered of limited interest by gender specialists because they see the
benefits as the wrong type of women’s empowerment; compared to the “right” one - the
involvement of women in business and public affairs. Wrong development, inappropriate
empowerment of women - this deserves a closer look.
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6
Women’s electrification
6.1
Impact of electrification on women’s empowerment
As a whole, technology development in general, and electrification in particular, appears to have
little positive or even negative impacts on women. Whenever women have limited access to
education and technical skills, industrialisation tends to reinforce men’s position and curtails
women’s productive activities. In a similar way, electrification seems to have bought little
improvement to farm activities – especially when compared with the use of combustion engines
through tractors, harvesters and other equipment. Its impact on rural migration to the cities - one of
the major trends in industrialised countries during the 20th century - has been at best zero, even
when, as in mid-century North America, conditions created by electrification and home equipment
were not dissimilar in rural and urban areas.
While, in Europe, electrification -limited to light and little more - appears to have had little impact
on the conditions of life for rural dwellers, American REA specialists repeatedly underlined, albeit
with some dissatisfaction, the importance of domestic over productive aspects when dealing with
electricity. The first target was, and hence which saw the greatest investments, home lighting and
equipment. Somewhat neglected in the early electrification years, domestic electricity quickly
became a major issue for the industry, both in terms of selling power and home equipment, and then
for the promoters of rural electrification. Private industry, as well as the public REA, appointed
what would then have seemed an exceptional number of women as marketing specialists and
experts in the uses of electricity. Many procedures aimed at reinforcing women’s participation were
established in the newly-created electrification cooperatives
.
So domestic aspects appear to be crucial when dealing with electrification. Even if electricity is
only seen as another step in home equipment development, it provides a general boost; as it did in
the first half of the 20th century in America, and in the second half in Europe, through the
development of large appliance industries and the mass dissemination of electrical domestic
equipments. By its magnitude and its symbolism, the success of this dissemination shows both the
importance of the benefits that electricity and appliances give to households, and the role that
women, as the major beneficiaries, can play in the process.
Acquiring electricity amounts to an investment in one's home. While those new electric lights make
a home a more pleasant and easier place in which to live, any new appliance also increases the
value of the home (this is where sociologists will talk about the development of the ideology of
domesticity, and economists will see capital investment). Increasing the home's value makes it
worthwhile to invest in it more and to use it more. Due to both objective (comfort) as well as
subjective (status) concerns, the home is engaged in a relatively new process where capitalisation
trends bring positive psychological advantages, these will lead people not only to think about
buying appliances, but also about painting walls, building extensions and so forth.
While households are investing in the home as a whole, they are also more specifically (and this is
quite new) investing in the kitchen. Most of the new appliances in the first instance - refrigerators,
stoves, grinders, kettles - were linked with the kitchen. With home investments, progress and
development do indeed tend to go first in the kitchen. In turn, these investments need an appropriate
kitchen and a place in which to keep these new investments safe and to protect them from children
(and vice versa) and outsiders. This means a specific room, not the multipurpose room where the
family cooks, sleeps and plays, as well as creating a new interest in cooking indoors and getting rid
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of dirty fuels such as wood or coal.
As with any new technology, electricity and appliances - and this goes for all appliances - are not
neutral objects. “Tools and technologies bought for a certain defined use develop other meanings
over time as part of lived experience.” (David Nye, 1992). “Objects affect what a person can do,
either by expanding or restricting the scope of that person’s actions and thoughts” (Milhaly
Csiksentmihalyi and Eugène Rochberg-Halton, 1981). Appliances create needs as well as respond
to needs. When a washing machine or a refrigerator enters a house, the family changes its eating
and clothing habits for a multitude of practical and psychological reasons, and the person in charge
of the work, usually a woman, will no longer wash and cook in the same way.
Electric lighting tempts dwellers to undertake home improvements and buy more pleasant furniture.
Just by its presence, the refrigerator, as with all “white goods”, leads to more ambitious standards of
cleanliness and aesthetics. By being efficient, less tiring and labour saving, appliances also
encourage greater use: having a washing machine and an electric iron leads to washing and ironing
linen and clothes more often, which leads to buying more and more such goods. Lighting
encourages more reading, radio and television more watching time, and thus these impose leisure.
The refrigerator cannot stay empty and this leads to buying more food and drinks. The media push
of food, washing powder and clothes increases the desire to purchase.
Thus home equipment, by itself, leads to more consumption, more involvement in monetary
activities. Earning more now makes sense, because it can lead to new home investment, new
consumption patterns, that can be seen as fair by the family, and can properly be managed by the
housewife within her time and work schedules. Further, home equipment is in itself a reward, in the
sense that it adds to the family status, as a potent signal of wealth and modernity.
As it also becomes easier to act efficiently in terms of caring for the family and children, these take
on a new importance. Hygiene, child health and education become growing preoccupations, as more
time and effort is available to dedicate to them, and the results are apparent. Not only are children
no longer expected to be heavily involved in household tasks, they also benefit from the new
improvements; directly – through adequate light, fresh food, clean environment - and indirectly due
to the greater time that parents, and above all the mother, can devote to them. And, in a similar way,
child health and education become part of the family’s status.
Cleanliness, hygiene and care for children are values that come only to women when they can
afford them, when they have time and power to act. When, in the 20th century, developed societies
were moving mainly from rural to urban areas, these values were mainly moving in the opposite
direction. These values also go from the better-off towards the poor, from the bourgeoisie to the
proletarian and, in Europe as a whole, from the Netherlands to France. It is not that rural and poor
women do not care about their house and their children, but rather that they cannot afford to invest
and thus the results are out of their control - they simply cannot afford to care.
The retreat of women into the domestic sphere, that came as part of the industrialisation process,
may be understood as an obligation placed upon women - who are now barred from education and
from production - but also as a strategy for control over the home and the family business. Home
technologies, electricity, appliances, all serve this strategy: they alleviate burdens, make housework
a decent job. Women are able to fulfil what they consider to be their responsibility, and can respond
to the results they see in front of themselves and their families, without facing impossible or painful
burdens of overwork. Housework is still a burden, but satisfying results are possible; and for that
reason alone, it should not be seen simply as a burden. Just like a paid job, it becomes a duty and
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has a status.
19th century industrialisation certainly succeeded in making housework a “one worker” job, but it
also made it into a “one manager” job. From the situation of being but one more worker in large
families, women became solely responsible for home and family management; a responsibility that
women were neither ready nor willing to abandon throughout the twentieth century, whatever their
gains within private and public life. Because home technology mitigates the drudgery for the
worker, it offers real opportunities to the manager: makes it possible to invest increasingly within
the home and family circle, and finally allows women to meet other challenges without having to
cede the responsibility for home management.
With the possibility of achieving better results comes an interest in quality standards that are able to
reward the duty and reinforce the status such as changing clothes everyday, cooking a greater
diversity of food, spending time with children. Women affirm their management capacity and
impose their control over home affairs, such as purchases, and so gain a position as a decisionmaker within the family: their results are concrete evidence of their power, and men must accept
this evidence. Standards develop through individuals, and then become a social consensus. If
conditions make it impossible for women to meet these new standards, they can react as French
farm women did after World War II - they gave up their rural life and looked for one in the city that
would enable them to respond.
Reducing the number of children, a major trend in industrialised countries, can be seen as
responding to the same dynamics: having less children is not only a direct financial matter, it clearly
responds to women’s need to keep control over the time and work assigned within the family, and
to meet the better standards of care and education now expected. Women have to respond largely by
themselves to the consequences of a new birth, and this is nothing new. However, now they also
manage: they measure the impact on their home life, and succeed in imposing their views on men. It
is an expression of their newly acquired status within the family, as well as a major step within the
slow process of gaining control over their own bodies.
Over the years, the time dedicated by women to housework has not significantly reduced due to the
introduction of home technologies, but this does not mean that all electric and other home
appliances have had little impact on women’s chores. The duration may not have changed, but the
chores have changed fundamentally, some in nature, but mostly in meaning. Chores are not the
simple maintenance of an ever-repeating life, but a support of progress. Results are not only
possible, but also potentially bettered by the incorporation of new technologies. Housewives use
their time in an ever more productive way, and are able to face new improvements for the house and
in family care: they are able to assume the labour operation costs related to further and larger family
investments.
A larger dwelling, more furniture, more linen and clothes, all require more care and more
maintenance, and their purchase would lead to problems if nobody could take on the extra work
required. Grasping opportunities to earn more only makes sense for men if women are able to
handle new family investments. Being rich used to require a number of servants to manage the
wealth. Now it becomes possible for a middle class household to be better-off because the female
partner is able to dedicate part of her time and work as the necessary counterpart to the new wealth.
And even if the money to invest comes from only one family member, costs are shared and no
decision made without discussions within the family. Women, in order to build up a status within
the family, act as home managers and stakeholders while having a full time employee available to
support the process – namely themselves.
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When the paid labour market offers new possibilities to women, they are put in a somewhat difficult
position. They have gained quite a lot in productivity, but have also reinvested much of the gain in
better results, and so their margin is limited. Nevertheless, overall, home equipment has made it
possible for women to work outside the home without over endangering their position as its
manager. This is a strong factor in them deciding to take on outside work and putting themselves in
a stronger position when bargaining with men, especially in places and at times where patriarchal
attitudes tend to prevail against women’s paid work. While working outside, the home manager
retains her position, as well as generally that of the worker, even if only part-time. Outside work is
possible for women, but not necessarily easy given the present stress levels of “working mothers”.
However, when women go out to work, men lose their best argument for not getting involved in
housework, and usually end up having to give a hand.
Nowadays, men participate increasingly in home tasks, a phenomenon in which home technology
may play a part. Electricity and electrical appliances have industrialised housework and make the
life of even male bachelors easier. At the beginning of the 20th century, together with shorter factory
hours, this undermined the boarding-house system housing large fractions of male and female
factory workers and seen by reformers as a menace to stable family life. Later in the century,
developments would support the further disintegration of the conventional nuclear family, and lead
to the development of the one-person household, and a home design matched to the two-earner
family. With its array of mechanical and electrical tools, home technology has eased the
participation of married men in housework and made it less degrading in terms of their own status,
mitigating against patriarchal and cultural prejudices.
Women take household technologies and transform them into well-being and values. Ruth Cowan,
talking about her own family’s experience, refers to the strength of the cleanliness value, calling it
the “dictatorship of the stain”. Cleanliness, as a symbol of family care, is certainly a powerful value
for both yesterday’s and today’s women. However, these values do not a have a universal content,
unchanging over time and all over the world. The availability of tools allows women to invest in
these values, to establish new standards, for the house, for the family, for the children, and to give
these values, owing to their work, an ever more ambitious content. That it requires them to work
full time, irrespective of the mechanical support they can get, seems an accepted condition. That
these values are part of the ideology hammered home in the media, by the appliance, washing
powder and food industry, whose sole interest is profit, is an admitted partnership. This progressive
rise in standards has no other name than development, with its associated profits and constraints.
These values should not be considered so much as an expression of women’s slavery but as the
description of an independent and powerful role taken on by women in a partnership with men
towards development. The conditions in this partnership, the gendered division of work, are defined
by cultural patterns, and these cultural patterns evolve according to societies and times, with
improving access for women to education, to paid work and to public affairs. Nevertheless, such
values remain. These are stand-alone values, they do not engage the debate as to who has to do the
work, they do not imply that women should be staying at home doing it.
Home technology plays an important part, because it gives women the possibility of tackling in fair
conditions the issues of cleanliness, of hygiene and of childcare; and to be in charge, to invest, to
negotiate, and finally to largely impose their views on household economic and social aspects, and
then beyond the home onto the wider society. The technology has an educational power, in the
sense that it helps transform housework from a burden to a responsibility, from a proletarian to an
entrepreneurial activity. For women, the “filth complex” value, to adopt Morin’s terms, leads to
responsibility, to action, and finally to power.
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6.2
Home technology and development
A major question is to what extent these arguments can be applied in developing countries for a
better gendered approach to electrification. When they deal with domestic aspects of history, and
not many do, historians have little experience of third world problems and rarely venture into
proposing solutions. Developers in national offices and aid bureaux are rarely that interested in
learning from history. Proposed solutions often copy the present state in industrialised societies, not
necessarily a bad choice, but ignore the historic processes that have preceded and permitted the
present situations. The more innovative solutions, generally based on “another development”
theory, and again not necessarily bad options, often feel it necessary to build the future from a
middle-aged perspective, avoiding the industrial age as the first step towards an alleged developed
country’s doom.
In order to benefit from the historic experience of rich countries for the development of
electrification in poorer ones, a reasonable approach might be based on the idea that there are no
developing countries, but only poor regions of a developed world. Solutions that have previously
worked well in other regions should then be applied to these, if only to save money on so many
“pilot” projects erring in too many directions. This makes sense: a number of principles, such as
decentralised decision-making, adaptable conditions of access and tariffs, consideration to the
implications for women, should be the basis for electrification. However, these principles cannot be
applied without a thorough understanding of the local situations regarding home technologies,
housework and conditions for women in specific regions – be they countries or provinces - in order
to determine, and to adapt, the best solution for the specific context.
Certain highlights of specific features of energy policies, electrification and gender in developing
countries can be discussed here, with the objective of pointing out the differences, from household,
industry and public perspectives, in situations and approaches, to those seen previously in
industrialised countries. This certainly deserves further investigation, if only because contexts vary
so much between countries: India cannot be compared to Rwanda, Laos with Senegal, South Africa
with Bangladesh. Rural areas in developing countries have their own identity, they are different
from rural areas in America and Europe in the 19th century, they have different economic
constraints and different social contexts. Moreover, they are part of a modern world. Analysing
situations and adapting solutions requires further research, and this is where energy, and moreover
gender, specialists have a large part to play.
In existing non-electrified rural areas, where the grid is not available, it is always possible for the
better-off to obtain electricity by other means: individual petrol or group diesel gensets, individual
solar or wind systems. These solutions all share the downside that they are expensive and offer
limited services. Even with support schemes specifically targeting renewable energy, they are still
only used by a small fraction of the population. Another solution for households is to use preelectrification solutions. Apart from lighting, for which populations have for ages found nonelectric solutions, such as candles, oil and kerosene lamps, a better example is the battery-powered
television that has spread widely to non-electrified areas all over the world. One of the first
industries to develop in newly electrified villages is battery charging, for the clients of neighbouring
localities who buy television sets and come to the electrified centre to charge their batteries.
Certainly watching television is seen as one of the first advantages of electricity - according to the
dwellers themselves, not developers - and gaining access to the grid generally means watching TV
for more hours. Private industry products surf on this wave, as with the LG “Sampoorna” TV set,
designed to operate in difficult reception conditions and responding to the increasing demand for
colour TV in Indian rural areas, and the “clockwork” radio.
65
Historical evidence shows that electricity is not necessary for the development of new technological
responses to household needs. Hand or engine-powered washing machines came before electric
models. Ice-chests preceded refrigerators for fresh food conservation. These “pre-electrification”
commodities succeeded in meeting a well-established market, before more expensive, but far better,
electrical equipment came along and replaced them. Little such mechanical equipment can be seen
in non-electrified parts of developing countries.
Is this due to the fact that washing clothes is not a burden for developing country women? Evidently
not. Ready responses come to justify the fact that women continue to wash in the most
uncomfortable and tiresome manners. Firstly, that the poorest are excluded from access to tap
water. This is generally true, but pre-electrification models did not require tap water and there are a
number of modern ones that can work perfectly well with well or river water. Secondly, that, more
generally, water is not easily available. Again true, but not everywhere, in some regions many rural
dwellers have individual wells, and even poor quality drinking water is suitable for washing.
Thirdly, that women’s work has no value to men, that women have washed like that since time
immemorial, and that no one would pay for a machine. These answers lead to the same old
conclusion: there is no market.
However, there may well be a market. Has anyone investigated, and moreover has anyone come
with a product for this market to think about? Can anyone pretend that women would not have a
flicker of interest if they were offered a proper commodity with a realistic instalment plan? The
answer might not be in the market, but in the lack of an offer. In some countries in Africa, the
electric washing machine presents a difficult or even non-existent market for the industry because
the better-off, who could buy one, have servants to do the job. In other countries, where servants are
too expensive, products come directly from developed countries or even if they are specifically
designed for specific large markets (the “made-for-India” products, for instance) they are targeted at
high- or at best only middle- class households. No industrial producer is offering a hand-operated
machine, or even a very low-cost electric one. Little attempt is made to address the poor, if only
because the poor market, if it exists, will be a difficult one. If one looks at any of the intermediate
technology catalogues, you will be lucky to find any washing machine (even if some models, such
as a pedal machine, have been designed), and it would appear that no public scheme has ever been
designed to disseminate any specific model. So despite the fact that washing is a large burden for
many women, no adequate response has been proposed, not by industry, and not by anyone else.
Other commodities can be purchased without needing access to power grids. Water can be made
available by individual hand or engine-powered pumps, without the need for electricity. Ice
production was very successful in pre-electrification times in America and in Europe, even through
to the second half of the 20th century. Gas refrigerators are an option where LPG is available, but
electricity is not. However, little is done through private initiatives, and nothing with public
support, to disseminate such solutions for a better domestic life. There is probably only one area
where public money is used to back industrial development in order to promote the dissemination of
existing applications (essentially lighting and radio/television) and R&D into new low consumption
devices (such as domestic refrigerators) and that is solar energy. This renewable energy option has
some logic, the promotion of new and better forms of energy, but little to do with responding to
household and especially women’s needs.
Public support faces two problems when becoming involved with domestic equipment. The first
one is market dynamics: when promoting any commodity, even devices such as low-cost efficient
stoves targeted at the poor, the first clients are the better-off and more educated households. The
poor only enter the market later and for a multiplicity of reasons (income, access to information,
66
minimisation of risks when confronted with a new product, etc.), the same reasons that produce
similar trends in developed country markets. Promoting any domestic equipment using public
money, whatever the public interest, will serve the middle class before the poor, and the poor before
the very poor. This is seen as politically counterproductive, especially when targeting the poor, and
ideally the very poor, is the overriding goal of aid and social policies in the developing world.
However, this inevitability is dictated by market forces, the necessary path for building a costeffective market. The overall market is not just the better-off and, when dealing with domestic
electrical equipment, any household that cannot buy under present market conditions a refrigerator
or a washing machine is effectively poor. Once the poor gain access to a product, the fact that they
had to wait for the better-off to buy it first is not seen as a drawback. Further, the promotion of
collective equipment – often seen as a clever way to be politically correct - generally leads to sour
deceptions.
The second problem facing public support concerns the vision of a “different development”, a view
largely shared by international aid practitioners. A desire driven by the present state of developed
societies, which are not seen as a model to follow, and a nostalgia for the less consuming and
maybe more socially friendly past. This attachment to ever remoter rural roots influences
judgements on what constitutes better development, on what sort of a future should be proposed in
and for developing countries: how to take the best from progress and avoid the rest. These
preoccupations, while well founded, lead to some misunderstandings when confronted with
people’s, and in particular women’s, feelings and desires.
The relation with rurality and rural migration is one area where misunderstandings occur. In a
household survey among new migrants to the capital of Mali, Bamako (World Bank, 1990), men
largely answered that life was more stressful in the city than in their former village, while a large
majority of women answered that rural life was far more stressful. Women certainly play a role in
rural migration, and have good reasons to see it positively. Their opinions could counteract the
near-universal condemnation of rural migration, or at least provide reasons to think about how to
improve rural women’s domestic conditions to discourage them leaving rural areas and looking for
freedom in the cities, however difficult conditions there may be.
Another example is undoubtedly in the area of environmental concerns. Thousands of analysts
justly denounce the large disequilibrium created by consumption patterns in developed countries,
and there is a general feeling that a similar phenomena should be avoided in developing countries.
Most development specialists agree on the fact that a wiser and less energy consuming future
should be offered to others: others meaning developing countries to aid technicians, and rural
populations to urban decision-makers. The perfect rural dwellers not only never think about
migrating to the neighbouring city, they also ride bicycles and use solar panels. That most of these
specialists, based in developed and developing country capitals, would never agree to cut down on
their own energy consumption, or to give up their car or air conditioning system, certainly casts a
question mark over their assertions.
The obscene conclusion, that access to cars, to washing machines, to televisions, to consumption in
general, should remain the sad privilege of the happy few, is not formulated as such, but underlies
the dominant development philosophies. The market will probably end bringing goods to
customers, but public support feels as if it should not be held responsible, and resist it as far as it
can. Developing country populations have difficulties to accept to be excluded from developed
countries’ way of life only because of externalities. As shown in many evaluations, rural dwellers
want the grid because it opens the door to an array of electrical services, and they resent getting
only solar because it offers not much more than light. Debates, which appear to us as key factors in
67
electrification policies, such as the priority given to productive and social needs, environmental
concerns and the development of renewable energy, and public versus private ownership, are met
with great indifference in households. People do not want explanations of what they need; they just
want what they desire. Environmental concerns carry little weight for them: they want electricity
and services. And they are right from a global point of view: they will share the environmental
concerns as soon as they share the benefits of energy, not before.
Energy programmes in developing countries are built on this ambiguity: access to energy, but with
as little consumption as possible. Little energy and minimal expenses incurred, while people aspire
to have more energy, more services, and are eager to spend more money achieving this. Political
decision-makers focus on low tariffs, and favour existing customers over new ones. Public
programmes, with endless technical imagination, focus on low-cost equipment - low-cost improved
stoves, low-cost solar driers – or on collective appliances, once again in order to cut costs. If they
were given the choice, most rural dwellers would opt for ready-made solutions, largely developed
in industrialised countries, ones they can see on their TV sets, and not customised solutions.
Moreover, many could access them with comprehensive support.
Why should this not be a public responsibility? Policies are often built on two parameters of
goodwill, that also define rather well paternalism: distance and pedagogy. Distance from the
population makes one feel that it is one’s public responsibility to decide what is good for the
people; pedagogy amounts to teaching people what is good for them through appropriate
sensitisation. Welfare principles tend to simply give people what they desire. There are sound
macroeconomic reasons to act over home equipment, as the paradigm designed by the incipient US
power sector showed: the more electricity that is used by customers, the more financially sound
become the utilities and the better their services become and, overall, electrification becomes more
cost-effective. However, there are other more intimate reasons to make it a public responsibility,
such as making people’s lives simpler, more comfortable and more pleasant.
6.3
Women’s electrification
Any survey on the subject, among electrified or non-electrified populations, will readily point out
that people do not want electricity as such, but the services it can provide; and that most of these
services will benefit women. They also show that, in numerous cases, women have significant
decision-making power over the household and household equipment. Therefore, that
understanding women’s desires is useful in setting up appropriate electrification strategies and
programmes is a view that nobody will oppose, either by conviction or by courtesy. However, the
message to get across to energy policymakers, and to utility representatives, is that building up
electrification programmes that give access to both energy and to appliances, and that involve
women in all steps and at all levels of the process of electrification are two indispensable factors in
creating success, for at least five major reasons.
The first one is that responding to women’s desires is an efficient way to secure electrification
programmes and reduce the public cost of these programmes. The more electricity that newly
electrified households use, the more cost-effective become the new systems. This is particularly
important in the initial years of operating new systems when the financial conditions are still
precarious. Electrification should not follow the European example, where the emphasis was on
connections, but the American example and integrate, as quickly as possible, efforts to disseminate
domestic appliances. This means working with populations to understand the market opportunities,
with industry to desophisticate some of the existing products and make them cheaper, and with
microcredit institutions to work out instalment schemes.
68
The second reason is that developing a market for domestic appliances is in itself an act of wider
development, due to its impact on production and commerce. This will have positive consequences
for employment in urban areas, where most producers, importers and wholesalers are based, but
also in rural areas through the development of retailers and maintenance networks. Rural activities
often lack rural markets, and this would create a major one. Moreover, there is historic evidence, in
developed as well as in developing countries, that spreading electricity and electrical appliances
leads to the other home investments (on construction, on home improvements) that also help the
development of rural production and services (wood, metal, brick, blocks, painting, etc).
The third one is that electrification and the development of appliances will help households to
manage their present situation and future development when faced with the disintegration of large
families and the disappearance of low-wage domesticity, two manifestations of the transformation
and modernisation of economies. Household male and female teams will become able to handle
new personal investments, to assume, given fair conditions, better houses, more clothes, better
family care. This builds up a new attitude towards investment, towards purchases, towards a need to
increase family income - the “monetising” effect of home technology. Appliances allow household
development and are also in themselves a reward, a potent signal of a family’s wealth and status.
Children’s health and education take on a new importance. This is no more than development, as
seen from the household perspective.
The fourth reason is that the development of domestic services linked with electricity is a potent
tool for women’s empowerment within the family as well as the wider public sphere. Not only is
there no contradiction, there is also synergy between the modernisation of housework through
electricity and various aspects of women’s empowerment. Electricity gives women the facilities to
play a greater and more crucial role in increasing the family’s welfare, and to contribute to their
community development. In Morin’s terms, home equipment leads to a process of “decolonisation”
of women. In simpler terms, home equipment liberates women’s energy which can sustain
household investments in a better life and, if certain conditions are fulfilled, allow them to take
responsibilities in paid work or public affairs.
The final, but certainly not the weakest, reason is more than simple: listening to the people,
answering their requests and trying to make their lives better, when their own efforts and private
market dynamics are not sufficient, are - or should be - basic principles for a public policymaker:
principles to which other considerations should be subordinated. One cannot dispute that if
households worldwide were consuming the same amount of energy as US consumers that this
would certainly be tremendously difficult to manage in terms of resource availability and
environmental risks. Nevertheless, giving households and women in developing countries the same
opportunities that households and women in industrialised countries had some decades ago seems
fair, as is sharing the consequences of striving for worldwide sustainable development.
In establishing electrification policies that efficiently respond to households’ and women’s
aspirations one is expected to involve communities, and set up adequate rules that promote
investment and facilitate access by the poor. However, the key factor is to involve more women, not
as a general equitable measure, but of necessity. In the early 20th century, American private
business was not particularly feminist, nor was the Federal government or the cooperative
movement. Nevertheless, utilities, the appliance industry and the REA found it essential to recruit
women to the higher ranks of their hierarchies in order to work on product design and marketing
strategies. Specific directives were given to cooperatives to include women within their leaderships
and to promote women’s participation and voting in the project development process.
69
While it is now commonplace to say that, rather than electricity, households want electricity
services and that women are the first to benefit from these services: this still has to be addressed,
both on the ground and at the planning level. In dealing with non-electrified communities, specific
rules must be set up to promote and even to enforce women’s participation in preparation and
follow-up meetings as well as in decision-making. Women’s participation in the electrification
business will be of crucial importance in designing and implementing publicity, in marketing and
sales strategies, in teaching public promoters, utilities and appliance companies and micro-credit
schemes how to better meet women’s needs and household budgets, and in helping them to
implement comprehensive dissemination policies. In regional and local agencies, female “utilisation
experts” will be required to support the development of electric services among existing and new
users of electricity.
Finally, gender specialists will have to face the old challenges and new responsibilities in a field
that nobody has really investigated but themselves, the domestic sphere of poor households in
developing countries. They alone have been studying daily life and women’s household chores,
understanding their main motivations for a better life and less drudgery, and proposing possible
solutions and methods. However, so far, they have been given only minor roles, such as gender
evaluation, just to make sure that men do not completely forget about gender aspects. It is perhaps
now time for them to become important players, to take on more responsibilities, to weigh directly
on public decisions, and to design and undertake specific programmes for a real women’s
electrification.
70
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